Police Probe Possible Extortion in Arrest of Interpol's Canadian Fugitive

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Head of the Indonesian National Police (Polri) international relations division Insp. Gen. Krishna Murti on Monday assured that the deportation of a Canadian citizen – and one of Interpol's most-wanted persons – Stephane Gagnon (50) has been postponed to investigate a possible blackmailing attempt that the fugitive was subjected to. 

“We are opening an inquiry to reveal this incident as transparent as possible,” Murti asserted to Tempo on June 5. “We will investigate those who are involved and the deportation process has been postponed several days to investigate it.”

Krishna said investigators discovered possible leads on the existence of a “broker” in this case as some individuals have been detained by police in connection to this case. 

“Someone’s playing around this case. We are looking into it, but thank goodness we have arrested some,” he said. 

As reported earlier, the Head of the Law and Human Rights Ministry’s Immigration Division in Bali Barron Ichsan said the deportation of Gagnon has been backtracked due to unresolved issues. “There still remains no certainty as the handover is still being tugged back and forth,” said Barron to Tempo on Sunday, June 4. 

Meanwhile, Stephane Gagnon’s legal representative Maruli Harahap said his client had transferred hundreds of millions of rupiah to a middleman and was disseminated to a member of the Indonesian National Police institution – which the lawyer claims to have multiple strong pieces of evidence to back the client’s claims –  in an attempt to avoid an arrest. 

According to Maruli, the Canadian was approached back in February by a “criminal case middleman” who warned Stephane that an arrest would be made within 4-6 weeks. Stephane initially swept this issue aside but eventually agreed to transfer an amount of money. 

“SG then transferred Rp750 million, Rp150 million, and Rp100 million to [a number of people] as to avoid being bugged again in the future,” said Maruli to Tempo on June 4. 

However, in April, the middleman yet again blackmailed Stephane for some amount of money in exchange to avoid an arrest but this time was ignored until the arrest actually took place. As Stephane was detained by the Bali Police, the middlemen yet again extorted the fugitive by offering Rp3 billion to be freed from jail. The Interpol fugitive turned down the offer. 

EKA YUDHA SAPUTRA

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