Djoko Widodo, Jakarta – The fugitive former co-owners of Bank Century stole hundreds of millions of dollars from their own bank before stashing the cash in at least 13 different territories, a witness for the prosecution at their trial said on Tuesday.
Saudi national Hesham Al Warraq and Briton Rafat Ali Rizvi, charged with defrauding the bank's investors, are being tried in absentia at the Central Jakarta District Court after having fled overseas in 2009.
The pair were majority shareholders in the failed bank along with the now-jailed Robert Tantular, and both could face the death sentence if convicted of the crime and captured.
"We learned that the assets were being held in Hong Kong, but further investigations turned up more in Switzerland, the Jersey Islands, Guernsey, England, the Bermuda Islands, Australia, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Bahamas, Luxembourg, Mauritius and Bahrain," said Didi Haryanto, an official from the Finance Ministry's legal bureau.
The looted assets allegedly include cash, equities and shares.
He said a government team set up to probe the case had found Rp 500 billion ($55.95 million) in assets hidden in England, but by the time it was able to request a freeze of the account and seize the funds, the figure had gone down to Rp 50 billion.
"The authorities in England only gave us a 31-day window from the time they froze the assets in which to recover the funds, but that wasn't enough time for us," Didi said. "So the fugitives managed to withdraw most of it before we could seize any."
He added that in Guernsey and Jersey, the team found Rp 300 billion in each of the British Crown Dependency tax havens.
The government has asked host authorities to freeze the assets. Switzerland, Hong Kong, Guernsey and Jersey have already agreed to, Didi said.
In order to return the assets, however, the host governments required final and binding guilty verdicts against Al Warraq and Rizvi, he added.
The two fugitives are accused of selling fraudulent bonds through Bahamas-based Chinkara Capital via three ailing banks – Bank CIC International, Bank Pikko and Bank Danpac, which later merged to form Bank Century – between 2001 and 2003, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors allege they failed to repay the bonds when they expired, and instead put up their shares in Century as collateral. Century, which was bailed out at a cost of Rp 6.7 trillion to the Indonesian taxpayer in November 2008, suffered losses of $286.65 million from the bonds fiasco.
The Attorney General's Office indicated it might bring charges of "looting at a time of economic crisis," which is a capital offense, against Al Warraq and Rizvi.
Under the 1999 Corruption Law, the death sentence can be used for massive graft committed under special circumstances, such as a financial crisis, a state of emergency, national disaster or during widespread rioting.
Sabar Anton Tarihoran, a former director of supervision with Bank Indonesia, previously testified that the bonds issued before the merger were deemed as suspicious by the central bank.