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‘Unexplained wealth order’ mechanism
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Illustration of anti-corruption. (Shutterstock/kenary820)
A
n avid social media user, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo recently shared with his 15 million Instagram followers that, after a delay of several years, Indonesia and Switzerland will soon ratify a Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) agreement.
This is a positive development. As the President explained to his Instagram followers, the MLA will enable Indonesian and Swiss financial institutions to trace illegal financial activities committed in both countries.
The recovery of stolen assets has become a top priority in Indonesia’s anticorruption agenda. Last year, Jokowi issued Presidential Decree No. 54/2018, which details a national strategy to prevent corruption, and Government Regulation No. 43/2018, which encourages citizens to serve as anticorruption “whistleblowers”. These legal frameworks represent a significant step forward in the country’s fight against corruption.
White-collar criminals usually hide their ill-gotten assets in jurisdictions abroad that are viewed as “safe havens”. Switzerland has long been a popular safe-haven for the storing of illicit funds because of its bank secrecy laws. Indeed, the Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) suspects that former president Soeharto had a significant amount of illicit assets in Switzerland that are still unidentified and therefore remain untouchable.
