The chief executive of Bumi, the Indonesian coal group created by banking scion Nat Rothschild, has vowed to clean up the scandal-ridden group within four weeks.
Bumi’s heavily delayed annual results came out today, showing there was a $201 million (£133 million) hole in one of its business units.
After announcing a $2.4 billion pre-tax loss, Nick von Schirnding told the Evening Standard that “the mess is bigger than I thought” when he took over Bumi at the end of last year.
The shares have been suspended, but von Schirnding is confident he will be able to ask the listing authorities to resume trading ahead of the annual meeting on 26 June.
Bumi said in April it could not verify some of its expenditure at its PT Berau business and called in Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Von Schirnding said: “Some of the transactions relate to companies that we haven’t heard of, [there is correspondence] that has suspiciously similar letterheads.
“Clearly, we didn’t have the right people doing the right jobs and we’ve removed a number of key people from a number of positions.”
