Police Say Gayus & Family Were All Planning to Move to Guyana

Jakarta Globe, Farouk Arnaz | January 19, 2011

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Jakarta. Gayus Tambunan, who has just been sentenced to seven years in jail for bribery and corruption, had been planning to leave Indonesia with his entire family, police said on Wednesday.

Gayus Tambunan? National Police allege the dirty tax
official obtained this fraudulent Guyanese passport, as
well as fake Guyanese passports for his wife and
three sons. (JG Photo/Farouk Arnaz)

Brig. Gen. Agung Sabar Santoso, the National Police chief of transnational crimes, said they found that Gayus’s three sons had fake Guyanese passports as well.

“There isn’t only a fake Guyanese passport for Gayus and his wife, Milana Aggraeni, but for all three sons as well,” he told reporters.

In addition, he said they also found fake birth certificates apparently meant for three sons, “but with fake, French-sounding names.”

Authorities have earlier found e-mailed copies of Guyanese passports sent by John Jerome Grice to Arie Nur Irawan, a member of an alleged passport ring who supposedly took the photo used in one of Gayus’s false documents.

In a news conference on Tuesday, National Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Boy Rafli Amar said the e-mailed passport copies had photos of a man “resembling Gayus,” and woman who looked like his wife, Milana Anggraeni.

One passport was under the name of Yosep Morris, born on May 9, 1979, in Georgetown, Guyana’s capital. Another document, with the photo of a woman resembling Milana, was under the name Ann Morris, born on May 6, 1979, also in Georgetown.

Boy said investigators “would contact the Guyanese Embassy in Jakarta to establish the authenticity of the documents.”

Police have asked Interpol to issue a red notice to arrest and deport Grice, said to have lived and worked in Jakarta starting in 2007 as a business consultant. Officials said Grice left Jakarta in July.

He was reportedly introduced to Gayus through J or Joko, a middleman arrested but later released on suspicions that he played a part in helping Gayus obtain fake travel documents.

The former tax official, on trial for graft and bribery, also used a fake passport under the name Sony Laksono, with a photo of him wearing a wig and glasses as a disguise.

Boy said on Monday that police believed Grice was the “intellectual actor” behind the Sony Laksono passport, which authorities said was authentic but that its contents had been tampered with.

A police source had also told the Globe that Grice helped Gayus obtain Guyanese citizenship. But Boy said the claim was still being investigated.

Gayus used the falsified passport to make trips to Macau, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore when he was supposed to have been detained at the Mobile Brigade (Brimob) detention facility in Depok, West Java.

The ensuing controversy prompted President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to issue 12 specific instructions on Monday to speed up the ongoing probe into Gayus’s alleged crimes.

He issued the directives hours after announcing that he would take a more hands-on approach in the fight against corruption.

One of the president’s orders was for law enforcers to look into the 149 companies said to have benefited from the former tax official’s illegal services.

“If the investigation suggests that there is enough preliminary evidence indicating violations, they should also be probed,” the president said.