RI reluctantly launches money laundering agency
Dadan Wijaksana, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The government on Tuesday launched its long-awaited anti-money laundering agency as part of efforts to get the country off the developed nations' blacklist of countries that are uncooperative in curbing the crime.
The new agency is called the Financial Transaction and Report Analysis Center (PPATK). Its first chairman is Yunus Husein, a senior official at Bank Indonesia.
"One of the aims for setting up the PPATK is to get Indonesia off that list," Yunus Husein said on the sidelines of the agency's inauguration.
He said PPATK would be in charge of analyzing and investigating suspicious financial transactions both by individuals and corporations.
Money laundering is the practice of converting money generated from corruption, bribery, smuggling, banking-related crimes, drug-related crimes, human trafficking, gambling and terrorism into legal investments.
Most people here claim their is little evidence of money laundering, but Indonesia has long been regarded by the international community as a haven for criminals with dirty money.
And despite having successfully enacted the money laundering law in April, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) of the developed nations has yet to take Indonesia off its blacklist, in what analysts believe is a result of the country's lack of follow-up actions.
The FATF is a Paris-based global organization and was set up in 1989, under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Corporation and Development (OECD).
Aside from Indonesia, FATF currently has 14 other countries on its blacklist, namely the Cook Islands, Dominica, Egypt, Grenada, Guatemala, the Marshall Islands, Myanmar, Nauru, Nigeria, Niue, the Philippines, Russia, St. Vincent, the Grenadines and Ukraine.
Yunus said the FATF would convene in February next year to discuss whether or not Indonesia is eligible to be excluded from the blacklist.
Although hopeful, Yunus was unsure that the country could change its current status at the upcoming meeting, because of some "unfinished homework" on the part of Indonesia.
The FATF has demanded many changes to the money laundering law because it does not meet international standards in some areas.
For instance, according to Yunus, the FATF questioned why the law only categorizes suspicious transactions as money laundering when they were worth more than Rp 500 million (some US$65,000).
"It means that we cannot conduct any kind of investigation on transactions worth Rp 499 million or below, even if they are fortunes alleged to have been generated from crime," Yunus said.
The existing law stipulates that banks or other financial institutions must report to the authorities if they uncover any suspicious transactions involving at least Rp 500 million.
"Revision on such a clause in the law would play an important role in lifting the country off the blacklist."
"(In the upcoming meeting), they will determine if we've made significant progresses, especially in those areas. But if they decide otherwise, we may face more problems related to the blacklist," he added.
The problems he referred to could include staunch warnings to multinational corporations about doing business in Indonesia; force banks to collect detailed information before conducting transactions with individuals or companies in those countries; and make it more difficult for banks to make transactions with businesses operating here.