Note on the December 26 earthquake and tsunami

As our product, tongkat ali, originates from central Aceh province, and as our company is settled near Lhokseumawe, North Aceh, as well as in Medan, the capital city of North Sumatra province (which was the second worst hit area), we were of course affected by the earthquake and tsunami, though we do not have to mourn the death or disappearance of family members or employees. As furthermore, our factory and stock are intact, we do continue to operate. And now, more than ever, the villagers who supply us with the raw product need the income they can generate from the rare export product tongkat ali.

Our currently most pressing problem is that the company through which we have processed a large amount of payments, PaySystems, is withholding the money they have collected on our behalf and on behalf of Acehnese villagers whom we have to pay. Even though we have processed roughly 150,000 US dollars through PaySystems without a single customer complaint or chargeback claim, PaySystems is not forwarding payments to us because they consider us too much of a business risk as we are located in Indonesian Aceh and North Sumatra.

However, it's not just PaySystems who are involved in this problem. PaySystems claim that the money has been locked for risk assessment one level higher up, by the clearing system of Pago, which is a subsidiary of the Deutsche Bank, the largest Bank in Germany. Thus, at the end of the chain, the Deutsche Bank are now withholding money collected on our behalf prior to the earthquake and the tsunami, presumably for risk assessment, even though there wasn't a single chargeback or customer complaint. For the record: our company has the PaySystems account 189020.