Lies Emerge over Piles of Century Missing Money

Mutiara Bank, the ex-Century Bank, clarified that the four customers from its Senayan branch, who are examined by the inquiry committee for having suspicious transactions, are indeed real customers, and not fictive ones. One customer, under the scrutiny of the committee made a surprising confession that the fund in his account was someone else's money.

"The customers are real. For fictive customers, we have several categories," Maryono explained when questioned by the inquiry committee's field investigation team, at Senayan Mutiara Bank, South Jakarta, Monday.

Maryo explained that a customer is called fictive if one of these things are proven to be invalid: the data and documents, the funding source. "Because of that, these customers aren't categorized as fictive."

Mutiara Bank had the four customers come over to clarify regarding a number of issues raised by the committee. The four customers were under suspicion because of some odd financial transactions involving huge sums of money in relatively short time periods.

It's possible that these four customers' names were only used by large depositors to break their savings so that their deposit in Century Bank could be refunded.

Kasena Pandi's confession

Kasena Pandi is one of the customers under examination. He has a deposit of Rp. 2 billion. The committee suspected him because he deposited his fund in November 2008, but then he withdrew all of it in December 2008. Kasena claimed that he deposited the money in November 14, 2008, because initially he was interested in Century Bank's large interest rate.

"I was attracted by the interest rate. I was only a depositor for a month. I got the fund through a transfer from another customer to my account," stated Kasena.

He was relunctant to mention who the other customer was. After being cornered by Maruarar Sirait, member of the committee, Kasena confessed that his name was used. Then he corrected his statement about the interest rate being his reason to deposit in Century Bank.

"The deposit was under my name, but it was my superior's money. It's not my money. I was helping my superior by lending my name," said the man who lives in Bintaro.

"Who is your superior?" asked Maruarar Sirait; but Kasena didn't want to answer.

"Please ask the bank. I'm afraid of breaking banking regulations." Kasena then gave his permission for Mutiara Bank to give the financial transaction records of his account.

The leader of the investigation team, Idrus Marham, stated that from the account's transaction record the committee will know when the fund came in and when it went out.