House set to approve new money-laundering law
Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The House of Representatives is scheduled to approve on Tuesday a new version of the country's money-laundering law that would meet international standards, and is expected to be able to curb rampant money laundering more effectively.
Minister of Justice and Human Rights Affairs Yusril Ihza Mahendra said at a final meeting with the House Commission II on legal affairs that the amendment of the law would help Indonesia avoid financial sanctions from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) when it convenes early next month.
"I hope Indonesia can eventually be excluded from the list of uncooperative countries," he said.
Indonesia is currently listed as one of the countries deemed uncooperative in combating money-laundering.
FATF is a global group working under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Previously Yunus Husein from the Financial Transactions and Report Analysis Center (PPATK) said that as Indonesia finalized the amendment of the law, the country was unlikely to be immediately removed from the uncooperative list as the global agency would need more time to assess the implementation of the new money-laundering law.
However, Yusril added in his speech that he was upbeat Indonesia could get off the list in the near future as "the United States and Australian governments have said they would help Indonesia to get removed from the list."
Indonesia will indeed report the completion of the amendment of the law to the Paris meeting.
A. Teras Narang, the head of Commission II, listed at least several changes of the new money-laundering law.
For example, in the existing law, gambling activities were not included as crimes of money-laundering.
The amendment also complies with the principle of double criminality. It means, for example, money generated from gambling that is considered legal in Australia should be considered as a result of criminal activity in Indonesia where gambling is illegal.
The team has also added a regulation ensuring secrecy in the reporting of suspicious financial transactions in order to prevent any leaking of information to the criminals.
Teras said that the amendment also included an "assertion on mutual legal assistance".
Mutual legal assistance allows a foreign country to participate in investigating laundering crimes in Indonesia, especially where these are committed by the citizens of the country in question.
The current law has already allowed such assistance, but the FATF deemed it inadequate as it only covers the search for evidence. But the FATF wants to include the search for and confiscation of documents, and other evidence that a crime has been committed.