RI to form antimoney-laundering task force soon
RI 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.