TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – Former Minister of State-Owned Enterprises Dahlan Iskan reviewed the case of Bank Indonesia Liquidity Assistance or BLBI. He said the aid was ordered by the International Monetary Fund, also known as the IMF, to deal with the 1998 monetary crisis.
The IMF ordered Bank Indonesia to help private banks that were struggling with money. The rationale is that if these banks are not injected with funds, they will close. Thus, it is feared that the national economy will be destroyed and the people who have deposits in the bank will bite their fingers.
“A BLBI of Rp 147.7 trillion was disbursed. It turned out that a mass crime had occurred: a lot of aid funds from Bank Indonesia went to companies owned by the bank owners themselves,” said Dahlan on his personal website, disway.id, Tuesday, September 7 2021.
As a result, said Dahlan, the monetary crisis persists. Even the crisis is very severe. The banks were still not strong enough to live and the economy fell apart. “The rupiah has become Rp 15,000 per dollar. Politics is chaotic,” he said. In the end, President Suharto must resign from his position.
The next BLBI case became the responsibility of the president after Suharto, namely BJ Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid alias Gus Dur, to Megawati Soekarnoputri. The BPK audit at that time concluded that from the Rp 147.7 trillion aid for the 48 banks, Rp 138 trillion flowed everywhere, including the company itself. So it is considered detrimental to the state.
At that time, the government was already pursuing. Many have gone to prison and many have not. In fact, said Dahlan, there are those who suddenly get rich from the games around BLBI.
Later, the government returned to pursuing the BLBI receivables after President Joko Widodo formed the BLBI Task Force. In his writings, Dahlan questioned what other assets the government could pursue and how to resolve them.
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