The coalition government, which controls more than 70 percent of the House of Representatives, is well advised to realize that stronger enforcement of the anti-money laundering law would  be a breakthrough in fighting corruption and other crimes because the burden of proof lies on the suspects or defendants.

But if the House eventually votes to reject the draft law or approve the bill but devoid the provisions that strengthen the PPATK mandate to handle money laundering crimes, our campaign against graft will remain feeble as it is now.

The blunt fact is the National Police has failed to do its job. Research by the Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) has concluded that of more than 2,440 suspicious transactions filed by PPATK to the police for further investigation, only 26 cases have reached the court. What an utter record.

The police, after public opinion pressures, finally investigated suspicious transactions worth tens of millions of dollars through the bank accounts of 23 senior police officers, whose monthly take-home pay ranges from only US$500 to $1,000. But after a few weeks of investigations, only two of them were found to hold strong criminal evidence.

The police spokesman said the other 21 bank accounts were clarified as legitimate because the money was legally earned through legitimate businesses of their families. The conclusion is certainly not credible, leading us to the opinion that the police are not strongly committed to handling money-laundering cases, especially those related to their own members.

True, not all the suspicious transactions filed with the police can be constructed into strong cases of money laundering. But we tend to believe, more than 80 percent of the reports on indications of money laundering submitted to the police were credible, at least because of two factors.

First, the transactions should have held strong evidence to make banks suspicious, otherwise the banks would not have risked upsetting or embarrassing their customers by reporting the deals to PPATK.

Second, financial analysts and lawyers at PPATK always thoroughly analyze reports on suspicious transactions it receives from banks and other financial companies. Only when PPATK is strongly convinced the reports hold strong indications of money laundering will the financial intelligence unit submit the cases to the police for further investigations into the predicate crimes, from which the laundered money was derived.

The bill on amendments to the 2003 anti-money laundering law is therefore designed to remove the weakness, by among other things, authorizing PPATK to conduct at least preliminary probes into the predicate crimes that become the source of the money involved in suspicious transactions.

Such an extended mandate will enable PPATK to refer money-laundering cases to the relevant law-enforcing agencies according to predicate crimes: the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) in case the predicate crimes are corruption, the tax directorate general in case of tax crimes or directly to the National Police in cases of other crimes.

A broader authority to examine, instead of only analyzing as is now the mandate of PPATK, is the minimum additional power PPATK requires to strengthen the enforcement of the anti-money laundering law. Short of it, the law would be rendered mostly ineffective.

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