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CPIB: Graft loot can be seized from Singapore
The Jakarta Post/Asia News Network
Thursday, Sep 13, 2012
YOGYAKARTA - While Indonesia has no extradition treaty with Singapore, it can still seize convicted graft crooks' assets in the city state, the Singapore Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) said at an Asean meet on Tuesday.
"You can go after money or assets amassed through corrupt practices in Singapore. But it has to be done on a legal basis," CPIB chief Eric Tan Chong Sian told members of the press at the eighth meeting of South East Asia Parties Against Corruption in Yogyakarta.
"We don't welcome corrupt people in Singapore and we don't welcome corrupt assets either," he added.
He said that repatriation of stolen funds was possible if the Indonesian authorities followed the correct legal procedure, including submitting an application to the Singaporean central authority.
"We are more than happy to wait for the application, seize the assets and return them to Indonesia," he said, adding that his country had returned such assets to a number of countries, including Indonesia.
He referred to a case when Singapore - albeit after a 17-year legal process - returned US$81 million (S$99 million) of assets stashed by Mrs Kartika Thahir, widow of Haji Achmad Thahir, a senior official with state-owned oil and gas company Pertamina in the 1970s.
Mr Tan reiterated Singapore's commitment to working with anti-graft bodies from other countries to fight corruption.
The bureau helped the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) in the case of businesswoman Nunun Nurbaeti, convicted in the 2004 vote-buying scandal, who absconded to Singapore.
"We knew that Nunun was in Singapore. She was in the country on a social-visit pass, so she was there legally. So what did we do? We made sure that she couldn't extend her stay. We were happy that the KPK managed to get her in another country that has an extradition treaty with Indonesia," he said.
She was finally arrested in Thailand in December last year and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison.
