T

he Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) is delaying the revocation of Sarijaya's business permit to protect thousands of investors, whose claims against the securities firm have not yet been settled.

The ailing PT Sarijaya Permana Sekuritas has halted its operations since six months ago, making way for the IDX to annul the company's business permit, but IDX president director Ito Warsito said Monday "We have decided not to annul Sarijaya's permit until there is a progress *on the settlement of the investors' claims*."

"We want to protect the investors; the annulment of Sarijaya's permit would make it difficult for us to monitor and intervene in the settlement process," Ito said in a text message sent to The Jakarta Post.

Currently, there are still around 930 investors, whose claims have not been settled yet.

Earlier this year, Sarijaya faced thousands of claims from its investors, whose money had been embezzled by the company's president commissioner Herman Ramli.

As one of the country's largest securities houses, Sarijaya has more than 8,000 customers spread across 48 branches all over Indonesia.

The embezzlement involving Rp 245 billion (US$24 million) of investor funds severely affected the adjusted networking capital of Sarijaya, forcing the IDX to suspend its operations since Jan. 6.

Not long after that, the IDX and the Capital Market and Financial Institutions Supervisory Agency (Bapepam-LK) set up a team to help the investors to take the necessary steps to facilitate the recouping of their lost assets.

However, regardless of the fact that Herman has been imprisoned, IDX and Bapepam are still facing some difficulties in assisting the investors with the recouping of their funds (in the form of cash) and instead they have only been able to help (so far) in the returning of the assets of investors in the form of shares (and securities).

The case is now under police investigation.

Despite the IDX's decision to avoid the revocation of Sarijaya's permit, Bapepam's head of division for securities transactions Nurhaida stressed on Monday that the stock market authorities could not give financial aids to the ailing securities house any longer.

Previously, the IDX had to cover Sarijaya's operational and financial expenses to make sure that the claims from the investors were being processed.

It is not clear what amount of money the IDX spent on covering Sarijaya's expenses, but it paid Rp 500 million for each of January and February to pay the salaries of the employees.

These figures for expenditure have significantly decreased each month as the number of employees has been reduced, Ito said.