PARTY FACTIONS UNANIMOUS IRREGULARITIES HAPPENED IN CENTURY FUND FLOWS

Jakarta, Feb 17 (ANTARA) - All party factions in the House Bank Century Inquiry Committee have arrived at the conclusion that irregularities did occur in the bank's fund flows, a committee member said.

"With regard to Bank Century fund flows, all the factions agree that irregularities have happened. So the score (of factions maintaining the fund flows were legally flawed and those considering them clean) is 9-0," Inquiry Committee member Hendrawan Supratikno, said at the parliament building here Wednesday.

He said the consensus about irregularities having taken place in the fund flows was reached after each of the factions made a deeper study of the relevant facts and verified two main findings of the investigative audit the State Audit Board (BPK) had conducted on Bank Century's finances.

According to the BPK audit findings, there were strong indications banking laws or regulations were violated and corruption had happened in Bank Century fund flows.

"These BPK audit findings were retraced and eventually confirmed by a Committee team," Hendrawan, a legislator from the Indonesian Democracy Party-Struggle (PDIP), said.

Earlier, Hendrawan had told a Committee session, a PDIP team had discovered a number of "strange things" in Bank Century fund flows in five cities, namely Jakarta, Medan, Surabaya, Denpasar, and Makassar.

Among the strange things were the existence of a Bank Century client whose name was not to be found in the bank's database, an inordinate surge in fund withdrawals from the bank in the period following its receipt of a Bank Indonesia (BI) short-term financing facility (FPJP) and temporary (government) capital participation (PMS) funds.

Another oddity was the existence of a Bank Century account containing funds from unidentifiable sources.

The PDIP faction in the House Inquiry Committee had concluded that its field findings constituted strong clues of banking law violations, money laundering, and corruption, he said.