Government Cannot Automatically Seize Joint Marital Assets in Corruption Cases, Says Expert

Bambang Harymurti has stated that the government cannot arbitrarily deem the legitimate share of a wife or husband in joint marital property as assets derived from criminal activity. He made the remarks during a Public Hearing Meeting (RDPU) with Commission III of the House of Representatives (DPR) in Senayan, Jakarta, on Tuesday (11/8/2026), emphasising that the court must determine the lawful owner of the assets. “Joint marital property requires special protection. If a husband is accused of corruption, or vice versa, the government must not automatically assume that the wife’s or husband’s lawful share of the joint property constitutes assets belonging to the spouse that originated from a crime,” Bambang said. He argued that the court must act fairly and not base its decisions solely on family relationships, insisting that investigations should probe whether the spouse was aware of the criminal act. “The court must determine who owns the asset, when it was acquired, where the funds came from, the share belonging to each party, and whether the innocent spouse was aware of the criminal act,” he added. “The principle that must apply to other forms of joint ownership is that justice should follow the ownership, not the family relationship.” Bambang proposed that there must be a clear temporal link between the criminal act and the asset. He argued that the state should not have unlimited authority to investigate a person’s entire financial history based merely on an allegation. “If the alleged crime occurred in 2015, for example, the state must explain how an asset acquired in 1985 is connected to that crime. This does not mean old assets can never be seized,” he explained. “It means the connection must be proven. The principle that can be applied is that the greater the time gap between the acquisition of the asset and the alleged crime, the stronger and more specific the evidence required to prove the link.”