Constitutional Court Rules Sectoral Law Violations Can Be Prosecuted Under Corruption Law if Elements Are Met
The Constitutional Court (MK) has determined that violations regulated in sectoral legislation such as forestry, banking, or environmental law can still be prosecuted under the Anti-Corruption Law (UU Tipikor) provided that the conduct meets the elements of a corruption offence. The court issued this decision after partially granting a request for judicial review of Article 14 of the Anti-Corruption Law.
The Constitutional Court’s decision was delivered in case number 123/PUU-XXIII/2025 during a hearing presided over by Constitutional Court Chief Suhartoyo at the Constitutional Court building in Jakarta on Monday, 16 March. The legal reasoning of the decision was delivered by Constitutional Judge M. Guntur Hamzah.
In its operative part, the court stated that Article 14 of the Anti-Corruption Law conflicts with the 1945 Constitution and does not possess binding legal force on a conditional basis, insofar as it is not interpreted as excluding circumstances where criminal offences in sectoral legislation meet the elements of corruption.
Constitutional Judge Guntur Hamzah explained that the norm in Article 14 of the Anti-Corruption Law was designed to ensure that conduct causing state financial losses could still be processed as corruption, even though the violation is regulated in other sectoral legislation.
“The norm functions as a legal instrument to ensure that any conduct meeting the qualification of a corruption offence, even though formulated in sectoral legislation, can still be prosecuted under the legal regime for corruption offences,” Guntur said when delivering the court’s reasoning.
According to the Constitutional Court, corruption in practice no longer emerges from a single sector but has developed across various different regulatory fields. For this reason, the law must be capable of reaching various forms of such deviation.
“In order to address various modus operandi of state financial or state economic deviation, the norm in Article 14 of the Anti-Corruption Law is intended to expand coverage so that anti-corruption efforts can be optimised,” Guntur said.
The court noted that various sectoral laws such as banking, forestry, and environmental legislation primarily establish administrative penalties for specific violations. However, if in practice such violations result in state losses and meet the elements of corruption, law enforcement authorities can still employ the Anti-Corruption Law.
“Even if sectoral legislation does not explicitly refer to it as a corruption offence, if the conduct meets the elements of a corruption offence, the perpetrator can be prosecuted using the Anti-Corruption Law,” Guntur clarified.
In such circumstances, law enforcement authorities can determine whether a particular act warrants categorisation as corruption by considering the modus operandi and its impact on state finances or the state economy.
Nevertheless, the court also reminded the legislator to formulate criminal provisions more clearly where a sectoral violation overlaps with a corruption offence. The court requested that future sectoral legislation explicitly include provisions stating that certain violations can be prosecuted as corruption offences, as has already been done in tax law.
“It is important for the legislator to explicitly confirm criminal provisions in sectoral legislation that overlap with corruption offences,” Guntur said.
The request for judicial review was submitted by Adelin Lis through his lawyer Deni Daniel. The petitioner had previously been convicted of a corruption offence by the Indonesian Supreme Court. In that case, the petitioner’s violation was actually governed by the Forestry Law, but law enforcement applied the Anti-Corruption Law because it was deemed to have caused state losses. The petitioner argued that such application created legal uncertainty, as the sectoral legislation violated did not explicitly designate the violation as a corruption offence.
Through this decision, however, the court confirmed that the Anti-Corruption Law can still be used as long as corruption elements are satisfied, whilst simultaneously calling on the legislator to clarify the relationship between sectoral rules and corruption offences to prevent differing interpretations in the future.