Jakarta – Indonesian police have named as fugitive suspects the heads of two companies involved in a multi-million-dollar share sale dispute with Canadian-based insurance company Manulife, a Manulife lawyer said Wednesday.
President of Roman Gold Assets, Haryono Winarto, and former director of Dharmala Sakti Sejahtera, Suyanto Gondokusumo, were summoned by police for questioning in the case but failed to appear, lawyer Hotma Sitompul said.
"The police are acting based on our report. They have now declared them fugitive," Sitompul told AFP. Sitompul said police had asked Winarto's lawyer Syamsul Arief to bring his client in for questioning, but that he had been unable find him.
The declaration of the two as fugitive suspects marked a dramatic turn in the Manulife case, which has dragged on for seven months, despite cries of foul play by the Canadian government and warnings by the IMF that the handling of the case was hurting Indonesia.
The share scam began in November last year when Manulife purchased a 40 percent share in its joint venture Asuransi Jiwa Manulife Indonesia (AJMI) in a government approved auction. After the auction, Roman Gold Assets, a virtually unknown British Virgin Islands-based company, alleged that it had bought the same 40 percent stake in Singapore one week before the Jakarta auction through a power of attorney signed by Suyanto.
Roman Gold filed criminal charges against the insurance company, alleging AJMI had duplicated its shares to enable its Canadian parent Manulife to acquire the 40 percent stake in the Bankruptcy Court auction from the now bankrupt joint venture partner PT Dharmala Sakti Sejahtera.
Police arrested the Manulife joint venture company's vice president Adi Purnomo Wijaya shortly after the Canadian company won control of the shares, but President Abdurrahman Wahid intervened 20 days later to secure his release.
The 16.7 million dollars Manulife had paid for the shares was also seized. Wahid's intervention followed concerns aired by Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien over the case. Manulife charged that Roman Gold was being used by Suyanto to block the sale of assets in his bankrupt company.
Then-Attorney General Marzuki Darusman said last month his office planned to halt its investigation into the dispute, saying it had no case to prosecute. Foreign investors and aid donors have complained the Manulife case illustrates Indonesia's slow progress in legal reform.
The case also discussed in April by representatives of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and government officials when reviewing pledges made by Jakarta to improve its legislative system.