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rosecutors demanded on Thursday a six-year sentence and a fine of Rp 350 million (US$38,500) for Andhika Gumilang, husband of former Citibank manager Malinda Dee, for his alleged involvement in document forgery and money laundering.

In the trial at the South Jakarta District Court, prosecutors claimed that Andhika had received Rp 331 million in cash and a Hummer car worth up to Rp 1.1 billion from Malinda, who has been accused of embezzling billions of rupiah from her customers’ deposits.

Prosecutors also said that Andhika was charged with forgery because he had made a false identity card in the name of Juan Farrero to open a bank account.

“Should the defendant fail to pay the fine, we demand another five months imprisonment,” said prosecutor Tatang Sutarna.

Devie Waluyo, Andhika’s lawyer, said that her client was merely a victim of Malinda’s crimes.

“Our client had no bad intentions in the embezzlement crime,” she said.

Devie said that all charges should be laid at Malinda’s door instead of her client. “Malinda did all the crimes,” she said. “She masterminded the case. The judges know it.”

Devie said that her team would raise objections in their defense plea in the next session.

Andhika is not the only person close to Malinda who has been implicated in what is possibly the country’s biggest bank fraud case in years, as two of Malinda’s relatives are also facing charges in the case.

Malinda, who is alleged to have embezzled more than Rp 44 billion from the bank’s premium clients from 2007 to 2010, apparently transferred some of the money to her husband, her sister Visca Lovitasari and her in-law Ismail.

The previous day, prosecutors demanded four years in prison and a fine of Rp 200 million for Visca for participating in money laundering. Visca allegedly handled Rp 7.4 billion of the funds swindled by Malinda.

On the same day, prosecutors demanded a 5.5-year prison term and a fine of Rp 350 million for Ismail.

Malinda once said that she was sad that her family members should be implicated in the alleged crime. “My brother and sister are innocent people,” she said.

Malinda testified that she involved Ismail in the transactions because she was too busy with her job as senior manager at Citibank.

Malinda claimed that she had to process about 30 customers’ transactions every day.

Ismail allegedly received up to Rp 20 billion of the embezzled funds, which were collected from 61 transactions, from Malinda.

The embezzlement case arose when 34 of Malinda’s clients complained about their accounts being deducted by amounts ranging from Rp 20 million to Rp 1.4 billion.

Investigations discovered that Malinda had carried out 117 illegal transactions, 64 of which were in local currency and 53 of which were in US dollars.

The incidents prompted Bank Indonesia (BI) to impose strict sanctions on Citibank in May this year.

BI banned Citibank from recruiting new premium customers for one year and also barred it from issuing new credit cards for the next two years.

BI may prolong these sanctions if, during a period of two years, the central bank finds any more violations made by the bank’s employees. (lfr)