Jakarta – Indonesia's senior economy minister, Kwik Kian Gie, on Tuesday handed a copy of an audit into the murky Bank Bali scandal to the IMF, paving the way for a resumption of multilateral aid to Jakarta.
Parliament made copies available to the public in both English and Indonesian, prompting a rush on the politically-explosive report which named the beneficiaries of embezzled millions and how much each had received.
Kwik, coordinating minister for the economy, finance and industry, personally handed the full report to the International Monetary Fund's Asia-Pacific director, Hubert Neiss, at a ceremony at the National Development Planning Board.
He said President Abdurrahman Wahid had directly ordered him to give Neiss the audit, conducted by international accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), and denied that Jakarta was yielding to pressure.
"It's not correct to say that the IMF pressured us," Kwik said. "We did in fact promise to disclose this audit." The decision to release it was made "in order to fulfill the aspirations of the public during the current era and to implement greater transparency and avoid misunderstanding," he added.
The Jakarta stock market reacted cautiously to the publication of the report, slipping 0.11%, with analysts saying most investors were waiting for concrete action to tackle the report's findings.
The report confirms some of the worst suspicions over the scandal which revolves around an 80 million dollar commission paid by Bank Bali to a private firm connected to the then-ruling Golkar party to collect interbank loans.
It said that 2.2 million dollars of the money was paid directly into Golkar coffers and some into offshore accounts. It also recommended that further investigations be made into the roles of two former ministers and central bank governor Syarhil Sabirin.
The government of former president B.J. Habibie, who had been supported by Golkar for a second term in office, had cited banking secrecy laws in allowing only an abridged version of the audit to be released to parliament. "A list of the robbers!" said one Indonesian reporter gleefully after collecting a copy.
Neiss, whom Kwik said was to meet Wahid on Wednesday, has said that the IMF is prepared to resume sorely-needed loans to Jakarta before the full legal process on Bank Bali is completed.
But he has insisted on "full transparency" – including the release of the audit to the public – as a condition of aid resumption.
Kwik also said an IMF technical team was due to arrive in the country next week. The team will work with the government on formulating a fresh letter of intent which should be finalised by mid-December so that IMF aid, suspended in early September over the scandal and the East Timor crisis, could resume.
Neiss said the IMF wanted to see the Bank Bali report followed up with legal action to speed up the return of international support.
Financial experts estimate the combined amount of aid from the IMF, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank that has backed up since September at some 4.6 billion dollars.
Earlier Tuesday parliament speaker Akbar Tanjung said the decision to release the full report had been made in conjunction with the heads of two parliamentary commissions probing the scandal, one dealing with legal and internal affairs and the other with finance and planning.