Bank Indonesia officially announced Wednesday that Prita Mulyasari had cashed in Rp 615,562,043 (US$65,249) in coins and small-denomination bills from the public donation program that helped her pay a fine after losing a civil libel suit against Omni International Hospital.
“This morning we finalized counting and transferred the money to Ibu Prita’s Bank Mandiri account,” Edi Siswanto, BI’s money circulation director, said.
The Coins for Prita movement began early this month after a local court fined the mother of two
Rp 204 million for defaming Omni.
A group of Prita’s supporters used the social networking site Facebook to publicize, and set up www.koinkeadilan.com to collect donations from the public.
Following mounting public pressure led by the Coins for Prita movement, the hospital requested the court not impose the verdict.
Prita was acquitted of libel charges Tuesday in the criminal lawsuit filed by Omni.
It took six days, six coin-counting machines and 86 officers — 70 from BI and 16 from Bank Mandiri — to count the money donated, Irwin Azwir, the BI senior cashier who was in charge of counting, said.
“We had to manually separate the coins according to their denomination and year of issue, before counting them using the machine,” he said.
With the additional money, Prita has kept a total of Rp 810 million of public donations in her bank account. She said she was very thankful for the public support and would use the money for “humanitarian” purposes.
“Since the beginning, I did not collect money,” Prita said. “I will soon meet those who initiated it and discuss how we will use the money.”
Enda Nasution, a noted blogger and one of the Coins for Prita initiators, said the group’s preliminary talks with Prita resulted with two options: donating the money to certain NGOs or using it to establish a new NGO, which would help promote either consumer protection, health services or freedom of expression.
Prita’s defense lawyers expressed their readiness to fight another legal battle after the Tangerang Prosecutor’s Office said it would appeal to the Tangerang District Court’s verdict, which ruled that Prita was not guilty of defaming Omni.
“We have heard that Attorney General’s Office officials have stated that prosecutors would appeal the court’s verdict to the Supreme Court,” lawyer Slamet Yuwono said.
He said Prita wished the case finish as soon as possible and she would open the door for an amicable settlement should the Omni doctors who examined her, Hengky Gosal and Grace Herza Yarlen Nela,
approach her.
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