Indonesia has actually been successful in extraditing from the Republic of Serbia fugitive Maria Pauline Lumowa, who has been desired for 17 years as a suspect in a significant scams case.
Maria, born an Indonesian national, left the nation in 2003 just before she was named as a suspect for allegedly taking billions of rupiah from state-owned loan provider Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) in a deceitful loan scam.
Led by Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly, the ministry ' s extradition group escorted Maria as the group arrived on Thursday at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport from Belgrade, where the Serbian federal government formally handed her over to Indonesian authorities.
” I am happy to say that we have actually officially completed the procedure of [extraditing] fugitive Maria Pauline Lumowa from the Serbian government,” Yasonna said in a press declaration on Wednesday.
Maria was named as a suspect for deceptive gains she made in loans from BNI released to her business PT Gramarindo Group, which she co-owned with Adrian Waworuntu. She apparently utilized a fictitious letter of credit to acquire US$136 million and 56 million euro ($118,846) in bank loans between 2002 and 2003, equivalent to Rp 1.7 trillion ($11874 million) at that time.
BNI grew suspicious about the company and reported the case in June 2003 to the National Authorities, which opened a loan fraud examination.
But Maria supposedly left to Singapore in September 2003, just a month prior to the authorities examination team named her as a suspect in the event. Interpol released a red notice in December 2003 for Maria, who had actually already been on the run for 3 months.
Meanwhile, the South Jakarta District Court tried and sentenced Adrian in 2005 to life imprisonment for corruption.
Yasonna stated in a declaration that authorities later on found that Maria– who was born in Paleloan, North Sulawesi in 1958– had gotten Dutch citizenship in 1979 and was concealing in the Netherlands, from where she apparently made several trips to Singapore.
He included that the ministry had actually sent out ask for her extradition to the Dutch government in 2010 and 2014, but they were rejected.
The Interpol National Central Bureau (NCB) in Belgrade apprehended Maria on July 16, 2019, as she was going into the country through Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport and signaled the Indonesian NCB in Jakarta.
The Law and Human Being Rights Ministry then issued a request for Maria ' s temporary detainment and extradition from Serbia.
” Indonesia and Serbia do not have an extradition treaty, however through a top-level technique to the Serbian government and [based on] the good relationship between the 2 countries, our request to extradite Maria was granted. […] In our meeting on Tuesday Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić likewise highlighted that dedication,” Yasonna stated.
” The extradition process is one of the few in the world that gain the direct attention of the head of state,” he added.
A statement from the law ministry said that Maria ' s extradition was “reciprocal”, declaring that “Indonesia had actually given Serbia ' s demand to extradite [Dimitar] Nikolov Iliev as a wrongdoer of customer information theft in 2015”.
Iliev, a Bulgarian national, was supposedly jailed in Serbia and extradited to Indonesia, where he was tried and sentenced in May 2016 by the Denpasar District Court to 12 years in jail for taking the data of 1,568 clients from more than 500 ATMs in Bali. Iliev last made headings in 2017, when he was regained in the Timor Leste capital of Dili after escaping Kerobokan Penitentiary on June 19.
