March 23, 2002
Fifteen of Indonesia's highest-profile names implicated in corruption could face trials in the same international court now trying former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosovic for genocide.
An international non-governmental organization is now seeking a legal opinion from the Netherlands-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the possibility of trying Indonesian corrupters there.
"We have filed our data regarding several corruption cases involving 15 alleged corrupters here to the ICJ," Opus Supremus' Indonesia chairman Stanislav Velinov told reporters on Friday.
Opus Supremus is an international anticorruption NGO with well- established networks in 42 countries.
Stanislav refused to reveal the names of the 15 alleged corrupters saying only that 10 of them were implicated in the US$16 Billion Bank Indonesia Liquidity Loan (BLBI) corruption cases.
"Should we disclose their names now, they might flee the country, or attempt other tricks to avoid international prosecution."
Stanislav, a Bulgarian, said on Friday that he had held informal meetings several weeks ago in Paris with several executives of several banks in Europe, international lawyers and several government officials in Europe whose governments were Indonesian creditors.
"The figures I met in Paris concluded that our legal data was sufficient and the cases could be filed at the ICJ to be examined," Stanislav said.
Opus Supremus' Indonesian office was established in 2001. The anti- corruption organization serves international investors, helping to unravel and combat corruption practices in host countries.
According to Stanislav, his organization decided to move forward by forwarding the legal data to the ICJ. He said usually, it took four months to five months before the ICJ gave their answer in the form of a legal opinion.
"Should the ICJ later say that our cases are worth being pursued in the international court, we will soon file lawsuits against those corruptors at the ICJ so that the alleged corruptors could be prosecuted in the international court," Stanislav said.
ICJ's legal opinion is much awaited not only by Opus Supremus, but also by other organizations such as Interpol.
"If the legal opinion says that the alleged corruption cases are worthy of being investigated, this could be a legal basis for the authorities to freeze the bank accounts of the alleged corruptors or take other legal action such as travel bans," he said.
Stanislav, however, admitted that his office's attempt had no precedent.
In the last 50 years, there had been 24 attempts to seek the legal opinion of the ICJ, but none of the cases, from a number of countries, concerned the corruption cases. Most were for human rights violations, such as ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.
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