Samadikun's asset can't be immediately confiscated

JAKARTA. The arrest of Samadikun Hartono, a graft convict who was on the lam for 13 years, cannot be immediately followed by the confiscation of his assets to recover the state losses triggered by his case, Attorney General HM Prasetyo has said.

"What's important for us is to arrest the person first. After that, we will communicate with him," Prasetyo said on the sidelines of a hearing with House Commission III overseeing legal affairs in Jakarta on Thursday.

The attorney general could not state when the losses reaching some Rp 169 billion (US$12.9 million) could be recovered, but he said “he had a plan in mind” to recover the assets. He refused, however, to explain details.

Meanwhile, Loeke Larasati, head of the AGO's Asset Recovery Center (PPA), emphasized that asset confiscation was a technical matter and involved the verification of assets.

The PPA will confiscate the assets after there's a handover of the technical matter to her office. Loeke does not know when the PPA will be authorized to handle the issue. "We will not interfere with the process. The executor is the prosecutor," Loeke said.

Samadikun, a former Bank Modern president commissioner, fled the country in 2003 to avoid imprisonment. He arrived at Halim Perdana Kusuma Airport in East Jakarta on Thursday night. He was arrested last week, but could not be flown to Jakarta until Thursday because of the deportation process.

His arrest was the result of cooperation between the Indonesian and Chinese governments, said the director of the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) on Sunday during his visit to Germany alongside President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo.

Samadikun went on the lam after a Supreme Court ruling sentenced him to four years in prison for misusing Bank Indonesia liquidity support (BLBI) funds for Bank Modern.

Samadikun's Bank Modern went bankrupt during the 1997 monetary crisis. The funds were part of Rp 145.5 trillion in loans disbursed by BI in 1998 to help 48 troubled banks during the crisis. Ninety-five percent of the loans were embezzled.

According to the AGO's website, Samadikun lived in a luxury apartment in Singapore and still owned film studios in Vietnam and China while he was on the run. (Erika Anindita Dewi)