The NTB Regional Police Spilled The Case Of Embezzling Rupiah Billions Of Car Rentals Involving The Former Head Of Central Lombok BPPD

Head of Public Relations of the NTB Police, Kombes Artanto. (ANTARA)

Investigators from the Directorate of General Criminal Investigation (Ditreskrimum) of the West Nusa Tenggara Regional Police have completed the handling of a case of alleged embezzlement of car rentals by the former Head of the Central Lombok Regional Tourism Promotion Agency (BPPD) with the initials IW. The Head of Public Relations of the NTB Police, Kombes Artanto, revealed that the handling of the alleged embezzlement of the Rp7 billion four-wheeled vehicle rental was completed following the investigators' activities in carrying out the delegation of suspects and evidence to the public prosecutor last weekend. "Because the case file has been declared complete and has been followed up with the stage of transferring the suspect and evidence to the public prosecutor, this indicates that the handling of the IW embezzlement case has been completed with us," said Artanto in Mataram, Antara, Monday, November 28. The transfer of suspect IW and evidence in the form of two four-wheeled Innova vehicles and other documents was carried out by investigators last Thursday. Regarding IW's detention status, Artanto admitted that he did not know because this was now under the authority of the public prosecutor. "Indeed, in the investigation stage, we detained the suspect IW. For now, because the authority is already in the public prosecutor, we have not monitored whether the detention is continued or not," he said. In this regard, the spokesperson for the NTB Prosecutor's Office, Efrien Saputera, admitted that he had not received any information from the public prosecutor. Previously, the Director of General Criminal Investigation (Dirreskrimum) of the NTB Police, Kombes Teddy Ristiawan, explained that the case of embezzlement of car rental worth Rp7 billion was a follow-up to the alleged violation of the cooperation agreement between suspect IW and a businessman from Bali. Their cooperation, explained Teddy, has been running for three years starting since the end of 2020. In the agreement, IW agreed to share profits in running the victim's 16-wheeled vehicle rental business with profit sharing per year. However, he said, until March 2022 the victim did not benefit from what IW promised. This became the basis for the victim in March 2022 to withdraw 12 units of his four-wheeled vehicle unilaterally from IW. Meanwhile, 4 other units of victims made withdrawals from pawnshops. Teddy emphasized that this issue has not been included in the civil system, but rather leads to criminal acts of embezzlement in accordance with the criminal charges of Article 372 of the Criminal Code concerning Embezzlement.