AGO investigators have seized assets, ranging from cash, mutual funds, land to apartment units, from Jiwasraya president director Hendrisman Rahim and two other former Jiwasraya executives – who are all accused of mismanaging premium revenue from the JS Saving Plan, one of Jiwasraya’s insurance products, by investing in multiple assets – since the beginning of their probe on Dec. 17

Investigators also seized various forms of assets from three other defendants, who are executives of three different companies, who are accused of manipulating Jiwasraya’s investment for personal gain. The total value of the seized assets had exceeded the Rp 16.81 trillion in state losses incurred by Jiwasraya’s investment mismanagement as audited by the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) from 2008 to 2018.

Each defendant is on the edge of receiving sentences up to 20 years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to Rp 20 billion, according to articles 2 and 3 of the 1999 Corruption Law.

Indonesian Anticorruption Community Coordinator (MAKI) Boyamin Saiman said the prosecutors might hand down light charges against the defendants if the seized assets could be used to recover state losses incurred by the case.

He, however, cited that such situation would only be possible if all defendants voluntarily returned their alleged illegal assets to the law enforcers with a noble intention of restoring state losses.

“Meanwhile, in Jiwasraya case, the defendants did not voluntarily return the assets, it was AGO investigators who seized all of them,” Boyamin told The Jakarta Post on Friday. “Therefore, I don’t think all defendants will receive light sentences simply because the AGO has confiscated the assets,” he added.

Boyamin also said that the AGO’s progress in seizing defendants’ assets was still far from complete as he estimated that the state losses caused by the investment mismanagement could amount to more than Rp20 trillion.

He said all of JS Saving Plan policies would be matured in 2022 and that the BPK had yet to calculate those immature policies in its recent audit on Jiwasraya’s financial report, which was in fact conducted from 2008 to 2018. Such a factor, Boyamin added, would eventually increase the value of state losses from Jiwasraya’s case.

Assistant attorney general for general crimes Ali Mukartono said the prosecutors would keep insisting all defendants to hand all of their alleged illegal assets and return them to Jiwasraya.

“We are trying our best to restore state losses caused by the [investment] mismanagement,” Ali said during a hearing with the House of Representatives Commission III overseeing legal affairs on Thursday.

Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) lawmaker Trimedya Panjaitan applauded the progress in the investigation after the AGO named last week 13 new suspects in the case – all are from investment management companies – for allegedly helping the six defendants launder the premium revenue collected by Jiwasraya from 2014 to 2018.

It has also named a Financial Services Authority (OJK) official, identified as FH, a suspect in the case for alleged abuse of power, which is believed to have paved the way for Jiwasraya's investment mismanagement during FH’s tenure as OJK department head of capital market monitoring from 2014 to 2017.

Trimedya, however, asked the AGO to also examine the liquidity of the assets so that it could easily convert them into cash to restore state losses.

“Imagine if some of the land has been used by the defendants as collateral to get loans from banks. It would be really hard to convert them into cash,” he said.

NasDem Party lawmaker Taufik Basari said the AGO should not only try to restore the state losses but also find a way to return all premiums that had been paid by JS Saving Plan policyholders.

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