Indonesia to form antimoney-laundering task force soon

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesia has taken another step to detecting and freezing the assets of terrorists here, as the government has announced it has issued a presidential decree to appoint the head of the country's first antimoney-laundering commission.

The appointment will follow the creation of the commission itself, which may also help get Indonesia off the Financial Action Task Force's (FATF) blacklist.

A statement from the Office of the Coordinating Minister for the Economy said on Friday that heading the commission would be Yunus Husein, currently Bank Indonesia's deputy director for legal affairs.

"Yunus Husein is the head and he has been assigned to immediately plan the organizational structure (of the commission) so that it can function effectively," said the statement, without detailing when the presidential decree had been issued.

No one at Bank Indonesia was available to provide details on the decree or say when the commission would start working.

The announcement comes as international pressure mounts against Indonesia to crack down on suspected terrorists and eliminate their financial network.

"We (Bank Indonesia) are very serious about going after terrorist assets," said Bank Indonesia senior deputy governor Anwar Nasution.

He said that Bank Indonesia expected to work closely with the police and the Attorney General's Office to find terrorist assets, but added the Bank had not found traces of their assets as yet.

The government expects the commission to implement Antimoney- laundering Law No 15/2002, which was issued last April.

Under that law, the commission will mainly gather and analyze information related to suspicious bank transactions and report its findings to the police and prosecutor's office.

Neither the commission nor Bank Indonesia can freeze assets without the authority of the police or prosecutors.

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes against the U.S., Indonesia was asked to help sever terrorists from their funding sources by freezing their assets.

The commission, once established, could get Indonesia out of FATF's blacklist, under which banks and businesses here are subject to greater scrutiny from foreign banks and multinationals.