Kemenkumham Successfully Bring Home Fugitive Breaking BNI IDR 1.7 Trillion

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Law and Human Rights has successfully completed the extradition process for the fugitive suspect in the BNI Bank fraud worth IDR 1.7 trillion, Maria Pauline Lumowa from Serbia. Maria is currently being brought to Indonesia to undergo trial for the case that entangled her.

Minister of Law and Human Rights, Yasonna Laoly said that the completion of extradition is not an easy matter. This is because Indonesia and Serbia do not yet have a cooperation agreement related to extradition. However, thanks to continued diplomacy, the Serbian government finally handed over Maria Pauline Lumowa.

"However, through a high-level approach with high-ranking Serbian government officials and given the very good relations between the two countries, Maria Pauline Lumowa's extradition request was granted," Yasonna said in an official statement quoted on Thursday, July 9.

Yasonna revealed that during the diplomacy process, several things had disturbed the extradition process. Maria Pauline Lumowa and one European country tried to thwart the extradition process. However, this could be thwarted and the extadition process went well.

"There was once a legal attempt by Maria Paulina Lumowa to get away from the extradition process, as well as an attempt by one European country to prevent extradition from materializing," said Yasonna.

According to him, the extradition process was successful because it had granted the extradition proposed by Serbia. Namely, granted the extradition of the perpetrator of customer data theft, Nikolo Iliev, in 2015.

Meanwhile, Maria Pauline Lumowa is the person most wanted by the Indonesian government. The reason was that the woman was a suspect in the cash burglary case at the Kebayoran Baru branch of BNI using a fictitious Letter of Credit (L / C) mode.

In the period from October 2002 to July 2003, Bank BNI suffered a loss of 136 million US dollars and 56 million euros or the equivalent of Rp 1.7 trillion based on the current exchange rate. This amount of money is a loan from PT Gramarindo Group owned by Maria Pauline Lumowa and Adrian Waworuntu.

BNI Bank began to feel suspicion. Because, the borrowing process which should be quite difficult because of the large nominal it runs very easily. It is suspected that PT Gramarindo Group was assisted by unscrupulous employees of Bank BNI because the loan application continued to agree with guarantees of L / C from Dubai Bank Kenya Ltd., Rosbank Switzerland, Middle East Bank Kenya Ltd., and The Wall Street Banking Corp.

Moreover, some of the banks that became the guarantor were not correspondence banks of Bank BNI. This suspicion grew stronger in June 2003. BNI investigated the financial transactions of PT Gramarindo Group. As a result, the company never made exports or was not in accordance with what was reported during the loan process.

Until finally, BNI reported the alleged fictitious L / C to the National Police Headquarters. However, Maria Pauline Lumowa left Indonesia by going to Singapore in September 2003 or a month before being named a suspect

From the results of the investigation, it was found that the woman had often been in the Netherlands in 2009 and often went back and forth to Singapore. In fact, it is known that Maria has been a Dutch citizen since 1979. Thus, the Indonesian government tried to apply for extradition to the Dutch government twice, to be precise in 2010 and 2014.

However, the Dutch Government rejected the request. Instead, it provides an option for Maria Pauline Lumowa to be tried in the Netherlands. Until finally, the woman was arrested on July 16, 2019, according to an Interpol red notice published in 2004.

"The arrest was carried out based on the Interpol red notice issued on December 22, 2003. The government reacted quickly by issuing a letter requesting temporary detention which was then followed up with an extradition request through the Directorate General of General Legal Administration of the Ministry of Law and Human Rights," Yasonna concluded.