Police detains two top executives of BPMIGAS
Thursday, February 11 2016 - 03:25 PM WIB
?Two have been put in custody for 20 years. They can?t go home. We detain them to ensure legal certainty and accelerate the investigation into the case,? a police officer was quoted by Berita Satu as saying on Thursday evening.
The two are Raden Priyono and Djoko Harsono. The former was the head of BPMIGAS until the dissolution of BPMIGAS in 2012, while the latter was his Financial, Economic and Marketing Deputy.
Another suspect in the graft case, Honggo Wendratmo, the former owner of TPPI, has not been detained since he is now in Singapore.
Investigation into the case has been ongoing since the middle of last year.
The police claimed that BPPMIGAS had awarded TPPI the contract to sell the state?s share of condensate in the period of 2009-2010 in violation of the proper procedures: The contract was awarded to TPPI without an auction process and TPPI has yet to fully transfer the sale proceeds, causing huge losses on the government.
After being named a suspect, Priyono told the media in the middle of last year that the condensate sold by TPPI during the 2009-2010 period was valued by BPMIGAS at US$2.7 billion. The firm only transferred $2.57 billion of the proceeds to the state, keeping the remaining $139 million for itself. According to Priyono, the case had been brought to court and the panel of judges had issued a ruling obliging TPPI to transfer the retained proceeds in installment for 15 years. The case had then been considered closed.
However, the police estimated the amount of proceeds which TPPI retained or failed to transfer to the government at more than $1 billion, based on the police investigation that TPPI booked more than $4 billion in sales, much higher than the $2.7 billion figures, claimed by BPMIGAS. (*)