Telecommunication giant PT Telekomunikasi Seluler (Telkomsel) says it has won its cassation appeal at the Supreme Court and overturned a verdict by a lower court that declared the company bankrupt
elecommunication giant PT Telekomunikasi Seluler (Telkomsel) says it has won its cassation appeal at the Supreme Court and overturned a verdict by a lower court that declared the company bankrupt.
Telkomsel’s legal representatives, however, said on Friday that they had yet to receive official notice of the court’s decision on Thursday.
“Our client [Telkomsel] has yet to receive a copy of the verdict from the Supreme Court,” Ricardo Simanjuntak, Telkomsel’s lawyer, said.
However, he pointed out that he had read a news report that mentioned that the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of the case review filed by the mobile phone operator.
Kanta Cahya, the lawyer for PT Prima, said that he had not received a copy of the verdict either.
“I have also checked the Supreme Court’s website, where copies of verdicts are usually made public. However, I haven’t found it,” he said.
He added that his clients would wait until they received an official copy of the verdict before planning their next move. “Only after we have received the official copy can we use the verdict as material for our consideration,” he said.
Kompas.com reported that the Supreme Court had granted the appeal filed by Telkomsel, thereby overturning the Central Jakarta Commercial Court’s verdict declaring that the mobile phone operator was bankrupt.
The ruling resulted from a lawsuit filed by PT Prima Jaya Informatika, a distributor of mobile phone SIM cards and vouchers. The commercial court declared Telkomsel bankrupt for not repaying a Rp 5.3 billion (US$557,000) debt to Prima, which distributed its prepaid credit and SIM cards.
Telkomsel’s lawyers have maintained that Telkomsel did not owe the debt to Prima, saying that the dispute stemmed from denied purchase order agreements.
Telkomsel had authorized Prima to distribute its phone credit and SIM cards for two years after signing a deal in June 2011.
According to Ricardo, Prima committed to sell 10 million SIM cards depicting national athletes and 120 million top-up credit vouchers and to establish a community for the special cards.
However, Prima Jaya sold only 524,000 SIM cards as of June and never established the community, he said. Telkomsel later rejected Prima’s next purchase order amounting to Rp 5.3 billion.
Apart from Prima’s claim, the court also based its decision on the existence of another Telkomsel debt to PT Extent Media Indonesia of Rp 40 billion.
Under Indonesian law, a company can be declared bankrupt if the plaintiff can show that the company has failed to pay matured debts to two creditors, regardless of the amount of the debts or the company’s financial condition.
Telkomsel filed an appeal at the Supreme Court toward the end of September.
Commenting on the news on the new ruling granting their appeal, Ricardo said that his clients were “thankful” if it was true.
He added that, theoretically, it would take at least a few days from the reading of a verdict for copies of that verdict to be made available to those involved in the case. “We’re still waiting [for confirmation] of what has actually passed,” he said.
In 2002, the same court declared Canadian life insurance firm PT Asuransi Jiwa Manulife Indonesia bankrupt after the receiver of now defunct PT Dharmala Sakti Sejahtera, Manulife’s local partner, had filed a bankruptcy petition over alleged unpaid dividends in 1999. The Supreme Court then granted Manulife’s appeal.
Two years after the Manulife case, British-based PT Prudential Life Insurance was declared bankrupt by the same court over an alleged debt to one of its agents.
The Supreme Court later reversed that decision too.
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