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Bank Century Investigators Play Down Powers
Dion Bisara & Camelia Pasandaran | December 04, 2009

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So much for magic.

The agency tasked with tracking the government money injected into Bank Century apparently will have to rely on more conventional methods, after warning on Thursday that unlike the Japanese cartoon character Doraemon, it did not have magical powers at its disposal.

“Politicians in the House of Representatives and the media expect too much from us, as if we could resolve this flow-of-funds problem instantly,” said Yunus Husein, chairman of the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK), speaking at the Ministry of Finance headquarters.

“We are not Doraemon, who has a bamboo propeller and a magic pocket and can seemingly do anything.”

Doraemon is a popular cartoon character who can conjure up any item he needs to solve problems. He can also move around at will with the help of the propeller on his head.

The PPATK has been assigned the difficult task of tracing the Rp 6.7 trillion ($710.2 million) of state money used to rescue Bank Century after its collapse in November 2008.

Demands for the PPATK to unravel the mystery have grown increasingly vocal, especially following widely reported but unsubstantiated rumors of illegal withdrawals of some of those funds by politically connected depositors, and unsubstantiated allegations that some of the money ended up financing President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s re-election campaign.

Yudhoyono and his allies have vehemently denied the allegations, and on Tuesday filed defamation complaints against a fringe nationalist group that has made such claims.

Yunus on Thursday warned against expectations of a quick resolution to the case, saying it would take time and the help of other state agencies.

A day earlier he had vowed that the PPATK would trace the funds as long as they remained in the financial system.

“To reveal further transactions, we will need the support of the central bank and other related banks. This is possible, but we will still need a significant amount of time,” Yunus said on Thursday.

Investigating the case at the behest of the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK), the PPATK has found irregularities in at least 59 transactions involving transfers from 44 personal and seven institutional accounts at Bank Century to 10 other banks.

The value of those transactions totaled more than Rp 146.7 billion.

However, so far it has failed to track down just where that money went.