Senin, 11 Juni 2012

Indonesia AML Agency Reports 1,800 Officials to Corruption Authorities


Indonesia's anti-money laundering agency on Tuesday called on government institutions, including the House of Representatives and law enforcers, to be transparent about what they do with reports of suspicious bank accounts held by their staff.

Muhammad Yusuf, chairman of the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK), said the list of more than 1,800 people who since 2003 had been detected as having suspiciously large bank accounts did not only include young civil servants and police officers, as had previously been said.

The names of the account holders also included some members of the House and officials working in law enforcement institutions, Yusuf said.

He declined to identify people on the list by name, but said the data had been submitted to their respective employers as well as to the police, prosecutors and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) for further action.

“Regarding the details and the development of the legal processes — which cases are legally processed and which are not — you will have to ask them,” Yusuf said of the institutions.

And since it was now up to the institutions to investigate and sanction those unable to explain the source of their wealth, he called for transparency, including for cases that end up being dropped.

“If it turns out true that A has an account containing, let us say, Rp 20 billion to Rp 30 billion [$2.2 million to $3.3 million], but investigations fail to find enough evidence, it is OK, there is no problem with that, as long as the public is told,” Yusuf said.

He said the PPATK was planning to regularly query the relevant government institutions about the progress of the cases reported among their ranks.

“We will do it once every two or three months,” Yusuf said, adding that every time they would synchronize the information they had with those of the institutions concerned.

He added that if the ministries responded that they had to drop an investigation for lack of evidence, his institution would demand data to authenticate the claim rather than accept it on face value. “We want to be more comprehensive, not like in the past,” he said.

The state administrative reform deputy minister, Eko Prasodjo, said last month that his ministry would soon begin investigating the “fat accounts” of young civil servants after PPATK announced that 10 civil servants aged 28 to 38 held bank accounts worth hundreds of billion rupiah. 

The National Police last year said it had investigated reports of 17 suspiciously large bank accounts held by senior police officers. 

Only three of those accounts were found to have irregularities, but those three belonged to officers already convicted of or on trial for other crimes.

On Monday, the private Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) announced the results of a survey it conducted last month that found that only 44 percent of respondents were satisfied with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s corruption eradication efforts, the lowest in five years.

The survey blamed long-unresolved cases and the KPK’s declining reputation for the erosion of public trust.

The government on the weekend flagged a plan to force civil servants to disclose their wealth.


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