Tansil's wife claims to be ignorant of business deal

JAKARTA (JP): The wife of businessman Eddy Tansil, the man at the center of the loan scandal at Bank Pembangunan Indonesia (Bapindo), frustrated judges and prosecution at his trial yesterday, when she insisted that she was a novice in business affairs.

"I only signed the checks," Indriana Tansil told a hearing at the Central Jakarta District Court.

Indriana acknowledged that she might have signed as many as 90 percent of all checks issued by Tansil's Golden Key Group, but stressed that she never knew what they were for and never bothered to ask her husband.

During the cross examination by the judges and the government prosecutors, she repeatedly answered with the phrase "I don't know," to the chagrin of her questioners.

Presiding Judge Soetrisno almost lost his composure with her responses at one point, causing him to retort, "You don't know? Did you have so much money that you couldn't keep track?"

Indriana, one of the five witnesses to testify at the hearing, appeared in a bright red dress with a big dollar sign across her chest -- something which further provoked the crowd in the public gallery who are already hostile to Tansil.

"Lies, lies," the crowd shouted each time she said she did not know. "Drag her in front of the court as the accused," others screamed.

Tansil is the main suspect in the Rp 1.3 trillion ($620 million) loan scandal at the government-owned bank. The losses to the government was large enough for the prosecutors to build their case based on the 1971 anti corruption law.

Given her relation to the defendant, Indriana was not sworn before her testimony.

Refuse

The prosecutors refused to accept her claims that she was a complete novice in affairs of business, pointing out that some transactions were carried out in her name. Some of these transactions included the signing of bankers' acceptances on behalf of Golden Step Development, a Golden Key subsidiary based in Hongkong, on 12 separate occasions.

They pointed out that Indriana also withdrew Rp 3.8 billion from Tansil's private account in a bank on Feb. 19, only two days after the defendant was arrested.

On this issue, she initially said the money was needed to pay for the salaries of Golden Key Group's staff. She later admitted that she had done this on orders of Tansil, who had asked her to remove the fund before the government froze the account.

Indriana however said that she was too confused to think at the time because the arrest of her husband came as such a shock. She recalled that Tansil specifically asked her to take care of the business before he was taken in by the police.

The prosecutors also provided evidence that she had bought stocks with interest earnings from the Bapindo loans, underlining that such an initiative could only have been done by someone with a good business acumen. The witness did not deny buying the stocks.

However, she expressed surprise when the prosecutors informed her that she was a registered director of the Golden Step Development in Hong Kong, saying that her husband may have used her name without consulting her.

The prosecutor also provided evidence that she and her husband are joint owners of between 60 and 70 properties. She admitted to only 25, stressing that they were registered under the company's name.

Another witness, Daddy Agus Salehrosa, a plant supervisor, told the court that he just found out that he was a registered director at various Golden Key Group's subsidiaries when the Bapindo case unfolded.

Three other witnesses yesterday were Gadjali, Joseph Sukardi and Otto Sampo -- all former staff of the Bapindo's branch office in Jakarta.

They acknowledged that they converted the terms of the loans for Tansil, stressing that they were working on the assumption that their actions were approved by the branch's deputy manager Maman Suparman and therefore also of the head office.

Maman is being tried separately for his alleged collusion with Tansil in the scam. (05)