Jakarta – Delinquent debtors and graft suspects will continue to bribe officials and flee the country with the trillions of rupiah they have stolen unless law enforcement agencies are made to clean up their acts, legal experts say.
Textiles tycoon Marimutu Sinivasan – who owes Rp 3.9 trillion (about US$411 million) to the Indonesian Bank Liquidity Fund (BLBI) and is wanted for allegedly misusing Rp 20 billion in a bank lending scam – is the latest graft suspect to evade law enforcement agencies.
Police first declared Sinivasan a suspect for the 2001 Bank Muamalat lending scam in August last year. Despite this, it took more than eight months for the Directorate of Immigration to slap a travel ban on him – on May 24 – three months after he had already fled the country.
The National Police and the Attorney General's office are both authorized to ask the directorate to issue travel bans. Neither body did so, however, despite Sinivasan ignoring two court summonses over the case.
In the end, it was Finance Ministry officials that requested the ban. The National Police, meanwhile, only declared Sinivasan a fugitive from justice last week after Sinivasan had already left the country.
His lawyer, Mehbob, said Sinivasan had gone to India to seek medical treatment for an ailment he would not name for ethical reasons. The helpful Mehbob promised his client would return to Indonesia after he recovered, without specifying any date.
Other graft suspects and debtors – Agus Anwar, Samadikun Hartono and Bambang Sutrisno – also managed to leave Indonesia before travel bans were imposed on them.
Like Sinivasan, some other BLBI debtors have left the country ostensibly for medical reasons.
While the government has slapped a travel ban on the six remaining big-time BLBI debtors still in the country, it has promised not to prosecute them if they pay back the amounts they owe to the state by this December.
But will the remaining debtors really return the money? Deputy attorney general for special crimes Hendarman Supandji said last month that Sinivasan was known to be one of the most "uncooperative" of the BLBI debtors. Yet he was able to flee the country.
Indonesian Law Studies Foundation chairman Frans Hendra Winarta said the contempt big-time graft suspects regularly showed for the law in this country reflected the authorities' unwillingness to seriously fight corruption here.
He said corruption cases should not be treated as conventional crimes, but extraordinary ones, so they would be handled more professionally.
"Regarding BLBI funds, considering state losses could soar into the billions of dollars, I think it would be logical to issue travel bans sooner," he said.
When asked why the travel ban on Sinivasan was imposed so late, National Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Anton Bachrul Alam said at the time, police had insufficient grounds to suggest Sinivisan would flee the country.
"We cannot slap a travel ban on a suspect if the evidence is not sufficient," he said.
However, Netta Pane from Indonesian Police Watch said the failure to prevent Sinivasan from fleeing abroad was a "classic example" of the police being unable to act professionally.
"Our government is weak, making it possible for certain irresponsible police officers to play around," Netta said, accusing detectives of colluding with fleeing suspects to help them evade justice.
"What we need is a president with strong commitment to resolving corruption cases. A president ready to dismiss his police chiefs if they fail to do their jobs," Netta said.
Erlangga Masdiana, a criminologist from the University of Indonesia, said the Attorney General's Office and the police were sometimes "insensitive" to the nature of a case.
"Fleeing abroad for health treatments is not a new modus for criminal suspects. The authorities should have been able to anticipate this." Erlangga suspected there was an "emotional bond" between the authorities and suspects.
"A suspect certainly has the right to receive the best of medical care. But whether the person is truly sick or not, that needs to be verified first," he said.
Recently, the AGO halted the prosecution of former president Soeharto for his ailing health; a move that drew a strong condemnation from legal experts and activists.
"One thing that could be learned from the handling of the Soeharto case is that he received medical care at home. Therefore, there is no reason for other criminal suspects to get medical treatment overseas," Frans said.