Ministry Of BUMN Appreciates Yasonna For The Extradition Of BNI Hackers

The suspect in the BNI burglary case Maria Pauline Lumowa (Photo: Humas Kemenkumham)

JAKARTA - The Ministry of State-Owned Enterprises (BUMN) appreciates the step taken by the Ministry of Law and Human Rights in extraditing the fugitive suspect in the BNI burglary case worth IDR 1.7 trillion Maria Pauline Lumowa from Serbia.

This is because the ministry led by Yasonna Laoly was able to bring Maria, even though Indonesia and Serbia do not have extradition relations with Serbia.

"This is what we have seen, a great thing done by the achievements made by friends from the Ministry of Law and Human Rights," said the Special Staff of the Minister of BUMN, Arya Sinulingga, Jakarta, Thursday, July 9.

According to him, the appreciation was made because the criminal act committed was related to a state-owned bank. He also hopes that the trial process can run well and the process of returning money to BNI can run well.

"Hopefully during the legal process in Indonesia it can also have an impact, that the losses suffered by BNI can be returned by the suspect by returning to Indonesia," he said.

Maria Pauline Lumowa is one of the suspects in the bank cash theft Kebayoran Baru branch through a fictitious Letter of Credit (L / C). From October 2002 to July 2003, Bank BNI disbursed loans worth US $ 136 million and EUR 56 million or the equivalent of Rp. 1.7 trillion at the current exchange rate to PT Gramarindo Group owned by Maria Pauline Lumowa and Adrian Waworuntu.

The action of PT Gramarindo Group allegedly received assistance from 'insiders' because BNI still approved L / C guarantees from Dubai Bank Kenya Ltd., Rosbank Switzerland, Middle East Bank Kenya Ltd., and The Wall Street Banking Corp, which are not a correspondence bank for Bank BNI .

In June 2003, BNI, suspicious of the financial transactions of PT Gramarindo Group, began an investigation and found that the company had never exported. The allegation of this fictitious L / C was later reported to the National Police Headquarters, however Maria Pauline Lumowa had already flown to Singapore in September 2003, aka a month before being named a suspect by a special team formed by the Police Headquarters. The woman who was born in Paleloan, North Sulawesi, on July 27, 1958, was later discovered in the Netherlands in 2009 and often went back and forth to Singapore.

The Indonesian government had twice submitted an extradition process to the Dutch Royal Government, namely in 2010 and 2014, because Maria Pauline Lumowa had already been a Dutch citizen since 1979. However, both requests were responded to by refusal by the Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which instead gave Maria an option. Pauline Lumowa on trial in the Netherlands.

Law enforcement efforts then entered a new chapter when Maria Pauline Lumowa was arrested by NCB Interpol Serbia at Nikola Tesla International Airport, Serbia, on July 16, 2019.

"The arrests were made based on an Interpol red notice issued on 22 December 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 at the Ministry of Law and Human Rights," said Yasonna Laoly.