Tansil denies bribing Bapindo branch executive

JAKARTA (JP): Eddy Tansil yesterday denied having bribed the former deputy manager of Bapindo's Jakarta branch to allow him to cash in on huge loans from the government-owned bank.

Tansil testified in the trial of Maman Suparman, the branch executive, that he did not paid a single cent in return for the services accorded to him regarding the loans.

"It's not true," Tansil said when Maman's lawyers went through the list of payoffs the government prosecutors said Tansil made to the defendant.

Maman is being accused of colluding with Tansil, allowing the latter to cash in nearly $175 million in loans from Bapindo in violation of standard banking practices. The prosecutors said Maman received a total of Rp 256 million ($122,000) for his assistance.

Tansil admitted to paying a number of executives of Bapindo's head office, listing Apip Sahabuddin (Rp 100 million) and Riswanto Hadi (Rp 175 million) among others.

"Maman never asked for anything," Tansil said, adding that Apip wanted the money to pay for the construction of a mosque while Riswanto "borrowed" the money to build a house.

Tansil is being tried in a separate court for allegedly siphoning off a total of $448 million from Bapindo between 1989 and 1993.

The prosecutors said Maman acted beyond his authority by altering some of the terms of the letters of credit issued in connection with Tansil's loans.

Tansil, however, came to Maman's defense at the hearing yesterday, stressing that Maman was carrying out orders from Bapindo's head office and directors.

Tansil said he visited the Bapindo head office several times to discuss the details of his loans with executives there as well as with the directors.

"The defendant was only executing the orders from the head office," he said. "He had no authority to change the terms of letters of credit. I'm sure the head office knew. They must have known."

Maman said in earlier hearings that he communicated information on each transaction regarding Tansil's loans to the head office. Head office executives in their testimony said they passed the information to the directors.

The directors, however, denied any knowledge of irregularities in Tansil's loans until June 1992, or almost three years after the first loans to Tansil were extended.

Former directors

Four former Bapindo directors are currently being investigated for their roles in the loan fraud, although their trials have not yet begun. They are Subekti Ismaun, Towil Heryoto, Sjahrizal and Bambang Kuntjoro.

Tansil yesterday said he discussed the details of his loans with the directors, "particularly Towil."

He also denied the suggestions that his loans with Bapindo had turned sour, saying that he would have been able to repay them upon completion of his project if he had not been arrested.

"The equipment had arrived. You could see for yourself," he said referring to the huge petrochemical project which he was building with the Bapindo fund in Cilegon, West Java.

Regarding the change of the beneficiary in the letters of credit from Sinopec of China to Golden Step Development, a company in Hong Kong which he owns, Tansil said it was done to facilitate the payment because he could not find any bank in China to act as the correspondent bank for Indonesian banks.

I Nyoman Moena, a senior banker who was asked to testify as an expert witness, said the alteration made by Maman from usance letters of credit to red clause credit was theoretically possible, although it rarely occurs in practice because of the strong risk involved.

Moena said that given the huge sums of money in question, the irregularities with Tansil's loans should have been detected by the bank's directors within a week.

Daryanto, an accountant from the Government's Audit Agency (BPKP) told the hearing that the losses to the government from the scam can be put at $489 million.

Meanwhile, around 50 students staged a peaceful demonstration outside the Attorney General's Office yesterday demanding that the government disclose the extend of involvement of three former cabinet ministers in the Bapindo loan scandal, Antara reported.

The students were referring to Sudomo, J.B. Sumarlin and Nasrudin Sumintapura, whose names have been mentioned during the various hearings as among those who put pressure on Bapindo directors to grant the loans to Tansil.

An Attorney General official told the students that there are not sufficient grounds to prosecute the former ministers, but he did not rule out the possibility if enough evidence develops in the future.

Sudomo is now the chairman of the Supreme Advisory Council of which Nasrudin is a member. Sumarlin is chairman of the Supreme Audit Body. (05)