01/30/08 09:32
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Bank Indonesia governor Burhanuddin Abdullah said Tuesday he will prove that he is innocent in a case of alleged graft involving members of parliament.
"I have yet to receive an official letter declaring me as a suspect. As a human being, I was shocked and sad," the central bank governor told reporters at the central bank.
"As a citizen, I will honor the legal process," he said.
Abdullah said he will soon appoint his lawyers.
"Hopefully, the legal proceedings will not affect the central bank performance and reduce confidence in the central bank among either local people or foreigners," he said.
Abdullah, together with the central bank's legal affairs director, Oey Hoeng Tiong, and the former head of the bank's communications bureau, Rusli Simanjuntak, have been declared suspects by Indonesia's corruption eradication commission, KPK.
They face allegations that they were involved in the misappropriation of Bank Indonesia funds, according to media reports.
"It is right that they have been named suspects. More details of the case will be announced tomorrow," KPK spokesperson Johan Budi told Thomson Financial.
Monetary policy unaffected
Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said she also believes that the rest of the central bank board of governors should be able to keep the central bank running as normal.
In the event Abdullah is detained, his tasks will be performed by senior deputy governor Miranda Goeltom, she said.
"I want to say that BI, as the central bank, will continue to function as normal whatever happens in the organization," Indrawati told reporters at parliament.
The naming of Abdullah as a suspect has raised questions about the motive behind it, said Fauzi Ichsan, an economist at Standard Chartered Bank.
"Is it for legal or political reasons? For whatever reason, I don't think the case will have any impact on the central bank's monetary policy," he said.
Monetary policy should be based on a consensus among board members, not a personal decision by the governor, he said.
Ichsan said his concern is that the decision to bring graft charges against the officials could be politically motivated, given that the case emerged just a few months before parliament is scheduled to appoint a new central bank governor and Abdullah still has a chance to run for a second five-year term.
Abdullah assumed office in May 2003, replacing Syahril Sabirin. The former governor was also once declared guilty of corruption and detained for six months before the appeals court cleared him of the jail sentence.
According to KPK, the commission investigators questioned Abdullah earlier this month in connection with the transfer of BI funds to the House of Representatives members during deliberations on a revision of the Law on Finance in 2004. The money was to have originated from BI Banking Development Foundation accounts.
The funds allegedly served as "grease money" to smooth the revision.
A report by Bisnis Indonesia said the money paid to a number of legislators amounted to 31.5 billion rupiah.
Lawmaker Max Moein said he does not believe that his fellow lawmakers would accept a bribe to pass the bill.
Moein said if BI really wanted a quicker way to get the bill approved, the decision to bribe would have been made collectively, in which case, "the deputy governors and senior deputy should have also been declared suspects." (*)
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