T

he Attorney General'€™s Office (AGO) announced on Tuesday that it had recovered Rp 1.2 trillion (US$123.4 million) of stolen state assets last year.

The figure is much higher than in 2011 when prosecutors only managed to recover Rp 350 billion of stolen assets, according to the AGO'€™s task force on asset forfeiture and its execution, which was established in 2010.

Chuck Suryosumpeno, who led the task force, said it was time for law enforcers to begin focusing on asset recovery in dealing with special crimes such as corruption, drug abuse and human trafficking.

He argued that the problem with the country'€™s criminal law was that it was based on retributive justice principles that focused on penalizing the culprit, rather than recovering state assets.

'€œAll this time, law enforcers [including the police, the Corruption Eradication Commission or KPK and the AGO], and judges still hold on to the old approach,'€ he said.

Many law enforcers still perceived that after a criminal case is closed, victims could always seek a civil lawsuit if they suffered losses.

'€œBut, it is not effective as filing another case would take extra time; we need to incorporate losses in the predicate crimes,'€ he said.

'€œThe current laws are adequate to recover ill-gotten gains. If there are losses, law enforcers should be able to recover them,'€ he said. '€œLaw enforcers [must] have creativity and not be too rigid in enforcing the law; we need to think out of the box.'€

A draft of the asset forfeiture bill was one of the House of Representatives priorities in 2011, but it disappeared somehow in 2012 and 2013. But a simple asset forfeiture mechanism is actually already laid down in both the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedures.

The logic was actually simple, he added, for instance, if someone stole a wallet, the victim would want the wallet back after the culprit was punished.

Chuck also warned that all law enforcement institutions must apply the new mind set before 2015 before the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) '€” when investment between countries would be easier.

Asset recovery is one of the fundamental principles of the 2003 UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) and the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNCTOC). The 1988 United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances also mandates cooperation in tracing and seizing drug-related assets.

The AGO is due to launch an Asset Recovery Office as a task force'€™s upgrade this year.

Deputy Law and Human Rights Minister Denny Indrayana agreed that the most effective way to deter corruptors was to seize the assets and that both the KPK and the AGO were trying to recover more assets.

'€œThe KPK is now going deeper into asset recovery. They are now using the Money Laundering Law in order to seize assets from corruption practices,'€ he said. '€œThe prosecutor also formed a task force to pursue ill-gotten assets and the results are better now.'€