SI denies involvement in smuggling attemp
JAKARTA (JP): I Nyoman Moena, the president of PT Surveyor Indonesia (SI), ruled out the involvement of the surveying company's officials in the recent failed attempt to smuggle a container of automotive wheel rims from Taiwan into the country.
Moena said yesterday that the Taiwanese exporter replaced the contents of the container already checked by SI officials with automotive wheel rims by altering the box's seals.
"The exporter has admitted the offense and had been fined," he told reporters following the inauguration of the new headquarters of the Association of Indonesian Importers (Ginsi).
He said the container was originally filled with PVC pipes but its exporter replaced them with wheel rims immediately after the inspection had been carried out.
Moena declined to identify both the exporter and importer. He also did not want to speculate on the possible collusion between the two.
Commenting on SI's plan to take over the whole jobs of pre- shipment inspection on Indonesia's imports from the Swiss Society Generale de Surveillance (SGS) in December this year, Moena said that every thing was running as scheduled.
"There are only four remaining countries -- Japan, the United States, South Korea and China -- where inspection of Indonesia's imports are still carried out by SGS," he said, adding that the opening of branch offices in those four countries is being prepared.
He said that SI has so far handled the inspection of imports at ports of loading in 13 countries including Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Hongkong, Taiwan, Canada and Thailand.
"I am optimistic that we will be able to handle all the pre- shipment inspection jobs before the end of this year," he said.
SI is 76 percent owned by the government, 20 percent by SGS and four percent by PT Sucofindo, a state-owned firm, which is responsible for the pre-shipment inspection of exports.
The government assigned SGS to conduct custom inspections in 1985.(hen)