The result of the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK)’s investigative audit on Bank Century, presented to the House of Representatives and the President on Monday, confirms the public notion that this bank did not merit the government’s bailout. But who should be held responsible?
According to the audit report, the Bank Century had been in bad shape since its inception from the merger and acquisition of Bank Danpac, Bank Pikko and Bank CIC in late 2004. The bank’s capital adequacy ratio at one point reached minus 132.5 percent.
Worse, Bank Indonesia, which had put Bank Century under its special supervision, was very poor in its supervision. It was not consistent and not prudent in implementing its own rules with regard to Bank Century. It even breached its own rules.
Bank Indonesia even acted on a bad faith when they met with the Financial Sector Policy Committee (KKSK) on November 20 to decide the fate of Bank Century. The central bank did not supply the KKSK with complete, new and up-to-date information. In other words, the central bank misled the KKSK to salvage Bank Century with incomplete and old data.
So, the core of the problem in this whole affair lies with the central bank. Then, the question is who in the central bank must be held responsible for such blatantly irresponsible actions.
The most obvious would be Bank Indonesia’s then deputy governor for banking supervision, Siti Fajriah. But she is too ill to be held responsible. The next in line were Siti’s predecessor Aulia Pohan, the father-in-law of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s son, then senior deputy governor Miranda Goeltom and then governor Boediono, now Vice President. At least, they are morally responsible for this fiasco.
Another element worth mentioning here are the crimes around Bank Century that have cost the state a huge amount of money. According to BPK, of the total of Rp 6.7 trillion allocated in bailout money, Rp 5.86 trillion was to cover losses resulting from criminal acts by shareholders, bank managers and affiliated parties.
One of the shareholders, Robert Tantular, is already convicted for defrauding the bank and was sent to prison for four years. But, Robert was convicted only for a minor offense, and he escaped from two other major fraud charges. The formulation of the charges was apparently weak and therefore he easily got off the other two criminal charges.
There are other significant alleged criminals who contributed to Bank Century going bust, including two major foreign shareholders. They already left the country and the police have had a difficult time trying to get them.
But the Century scandal does not stop there. The reasons why the House tasked the BPK to conduct an investigative audit was that there were a lot of suspicion that the saving of election campaign funds deposited in the bank was the real motive behind the decision to carry out the bailout.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono already went public on Monday, saying that no campaign funds for his re-election came from Bank Century. So he said he would welcome any investigation into this case.
The BPK investigative audit report, however, did not say anything about possible campaign funds. BPK simply did not get access to the information on the flow of funds from Bank Century before and after the bailout. The Financial Transaction Report Analysis Center (PPATK) was apparently reluctant to supply the data to the BPK.
Therefore, we support the move by more than 240 legislators to establish a House inquiry team to investigate further the Bank Century scandal so that we would get a clearer picture of the whole affair.
