....ayoo... siapa mau menyumbang?? Kampanye tinggal 4 tahun lagi.....
;-)
Dow Jones Newswires
December 6, 2000
EXCLUSIVE: Indonesia Texmaco Moved Assets Pre-Takeover
By SIMON MONTLAKE
JAKARTA -- Texmaco, the country's largest corporate debtor, liquidated
or
diverted ownership of some of its prize assets around the time it was
taken
over by the Indonesian government, according to documents reviewed by
Dow
Jones Newswires.
Evidence that Texmaco shielded assets from the government would add to
pressure on Indonesia to revise Texmaco's debt accord, the country's
largest-ever debt restructuring. The documents also raise alarming
questions
about whether politically connected tycoons can emerge from debt
workouts
still holding valuable assets.
In September, Texmaco and its owner, Marimutu Sinivasan, signed a $2.7
billion debt workout with the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency under
which Sinivasan pledged to hand over all his assets and repay the group
debts
over a 12 year period.
During that period, IBRA will own and manage Texmaco, a textiles and
engineering group, via a new holding company.
The pact was hailed by economics chief Rizal Ramli as a "model" debt
restructuring. Indonesian President Abderrahman Wahid has also praised
Sinivasan, and sought to suspend legal probes of his businesses.
But three weeks before that pact, and without informing IBRA officials,
Texmaco sold its 60% stake in Germany's Trevira GmbH to DB Investor, a
unit
of Deutsche Bank AG (G.DBK), raising around $120 million, according to
people
familiar with the transaction.
Texmaco then used $30 million of those funds to pay Credit Suisse First
Boston, which allowed it to recover controlling stakes in two foreign
companies that had been seized in July by the Swiss bank as collateral
for an
unpaid loan, according to internal Texmaco documents.
The shares in the two companies - British garment maker SR Gent PLC and
South
African textile company Coastal Group - were also pledged to IBRA under
the
Sept. 30 debt workout.
But, according to documents filed Nov. 22 with the U.S. Securities &
Exchange
Commission by CSFB, the controlling stakes in SR Gent and Coastal are
now
owned by Pegasus Assets, a British Virgin Islands registered company.
In the IBRA accord, Sinivasan didn't declare Pegasus as a family or
group-owned asset, although he promised to hand over SR Gent and Coastal
Group, said an IBRA spokeswoman, Vanda Irawati Arisandi.
"According to the (Sept. 30) agreement, Sinivasan should transfer those
companies to IBRA as an additional pledged asset," she said.
But it remains unclear why Texmaco would go to the trouble of redeeming
the
stakes from CSFB with the cash from the Trevira sale, only to see them
taken
over by IBRA under the debt workout.
Also, before the SR Gent and Coastal stakes were taken over by CSFB in
July
as collateral for unpaid loans, they were held by Baleine Investments, a
Texmaco unit also registered in the British Virgin Islands. Unlike
Pegasus,
Baleine is on the list of companies declared by Texmaco to IBRA. So
ownership
of the stakes has effectively passed from a company that was declared to
IBRA
- Baleine - to a company that wasn't - Pegasus.
Sinivasan declined repeated requests for an interview with Dow Jones
Newswires to discuss the transfer of ownership and the sale of Trevira.
His
spokesman, Joydeep Mazumder, also declined to comment on the matter.
Tom Grimmer, a spokesman for CSFB in Hong Kong, confirmed the sale of
the
loan collateral to Pegasus, but strongly denied that the bank had helped
Texmaco shield these assets from IBRA.
The loan predated IBRA's involvement in Texmaco's debt restructuting and
ranked as senior, secured debt, he said.
"CSFB foreclosed on these assets in the normal course of
business...(then) we
sold the assets," Grimmer said. He said the asset sale was separate from
the
loan agreement, since the borrower had defaulted and surrendered the
collateral.
He declined to give more details about Pegasus, saying it was as a
legitimate
buyer and that CSFB had verified the source of its funds.
Strong political connections
Sinivasan and his brother, Manimaren Sinivasan, are well know for their
high
level political connections in Indonesia. Both men were linked to last
year's
PT Bank Bali (P.BBL) scandal that involved the diversion of state funds
to a
company controlled by the former ruling Golkar party.
The audit of the money trail found that some of the disputed funds had
been
channeled through Texmaco's bank accounts.
Fears that powerful local businessmen are cutting favorable deals with
IBRA
has prompted the International Monetary Fund to urge Indonesia to hire
outside experts to review the agency's major debt workouts, including
Texmaco's. Provision for these reviews should be included in Indonesia's
next
letter of intent with the IMF, due later in December, under the fund's
$5
billion bailout program, an IMF official said.
Indeed, just days before the Texmaco accord signing, the IMF and World
Bank
wrote privately to economics chief Ramli urging him to seek a second
opinion
on the deal and saying it risked being a burden on Indonesian taxpayers.
But Ramli didn't act on the request or bring it to the attention of the
powerful Financial Services Policy Committee, which he chairs. The
committee
approved the Texmaco restructuring on Sept. 30.
The beneficial ownership of Pegasus, which now owns the SR Gent and
Coastal
stakes, couldn't be immediately confirmed with authorities in the
British
Virgin Islands. But sources say its sole director is P. Manohar, a
senior
Texmaco executive.
Asked Monday about his status as director of Pegasus and the ultimate
ownership of the company, Manohar declined to comment. "I don't want to
talk
about it," he said.
It's also unclear what happened to the remaining $90 million that
Texmaco
received from the sale of Trevira.
According to IBRA officials, Sinivasan has subsequently informed the
debt
restructuring agency that the entire proceeds of the Trevira sale went
to
creditors of European Fiber Industries, a Texmaco unit based in the
Netherlands that was originally used to acquire Trevira in 1998.
But that doesn't appear to be the case for the $30 million paid to CSFB.
CSFB originally lent $38 million to Texmaco under an agreement signed in
October 1999 by Baleine, CSFB and Icon Systems (ICSI), a U.S. Texmaco
shell
company that then held the SR Gent shares. Baleine held the Coastal
shares
via a Mauritius shell company. Baleine pledged the Coastal and SR Gent
shares
as collateral for the loan.
Baleine then used the money to buy back from CSFB around $125 million of
foreign currency notes issued by its polyster unit, PT Polysindo Eka
Perkasa
(P.PEP).
In other words, $30 million of the Trevira proceeds was used in a
transaction
that apparently has nothing to do with repaying creditors of EFI.
In fact, the motive for buying back the Polysindo debt was to give
Texmaco a
stronger position in a debt workout which was then under negotiation
with
Polysindo's private bondholders, owed about $1.1 billion. But that deal
collapsed in November 1999 after Sinivasan was accused of misusing
around
$900 million in state-bank export credits at the height of Indonesia's
currency crisis.
One of the charges levelled against Sinivasan by former state
enterprises
minister Laksamana Sukardi was that export credits were diverted to
acquire
foreign assets - including the purchase of Trevira in early 1998.
Sinivasan denied wrongdoing, and an investigation by the attorney
general was
later dropped.
-By Simon Montlake, Dow Jones Newswires; +6221 3983 1277;
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
