Febriamy Hutapea, Ardian Wibisono, Amir Tejo & Made Arya Kencana – Despite their own great expectations, four groups of legislators probing the Bank Century scandal dispatched to the provinces on Friday to gather first-hand information about wrongdoing in the costly bailout have so far only reported errors and dead ends.
The most embarrassed of the members of the House of Representatives special committee was Akbar Faizal, an opposition People's Conscience Party (Hanura) lawmaker, who was accused of "maligning" the Democratic Party after stating that a suspicious donation of Rp 1.45 billion ($155,000) had been made to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's presidential campaign fund.
Akbar had alleged that the donation was from the account of Amiruddin Rustan, a Makassar businessman and Bank Century depositor who received bailout funds.
On Friday, however, Akbar recanted. "May I correct my earlier statement regarding donations to one of the tickets in the presidential race last year," he told state news agency Antara. "What I meant was Asuransi Jaya Proteksi, not Amiruddin Rustan. I made a mistake."
Akbar made his claims based on records from the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK), which said Rp 66 billion had flowed to a Bank Century account under the name of Amiruddin. On the General Elections Commission's (KPU) campaign contributions list, PT Rustan Consulting is listed as donating Rp 500 million to Yudhoyono.
AJP is also listed as a Bank Century depositor that made donations totaling Rp 4.65 billion to the campaign.
On Friday, Amiruddin told the lawmakers who visited him, including Akbar, that their claims were false, and all of the Rp 66 billion had been his own. He said that because of the allegations he could not withdraw Rp 8 billion from his account.
Amiruddin and the Makassar delegation were not the only ones having a bad day. The five-strong delegation that traveled to Bali said they were unable to check 50 accounts labeled as suspicious by the PPATK at the Denpasar branch of Bank Century, now renamed Bank Mutiara.
Gayus Lumbuun of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) blamed the bank for being uncooperative. "We were cut off. We lost the money trail because the Mutiara branch in Denpasar was uncooperative," he said.
But Tan Siau Lan Ani, head of the branch, said it could not provide information on depositors because that would breach banking regulations. Gayus said he planned legal action to force the bank's directors to disclose the account data.
Meanwhile, lawmakers visiting Surabaya claimed some success, saying they had learned that Budi Sampoerna, the bank's single largest depositor, had split his Rp 950 billion deposit into hundreds of accounts each worth Rp 2 billion as a strategy to ensure his money would be covered by government guarantee. But this had already been revealed by the inquiry committee.
The team said the bank relied heavily on Budi, who kept about Rp 950 billion of deposits in Bank Century, which currently has assets of only Rp 1 trillion.
The fourth traveling team went to Medan to visit the Bank Mutiara branch there, but reported no significant findings.
A final team in Jakarta, led by committee chairman Idrus Marham, tried to reconstruct the Financial Stability System Committee (KSSK) meeting in November 2008 during which the Bank Century bailout was approved.