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Calls mount for assets bill to regulate illicit enrichment
Antigraft activists are increasingly pushing for a provision on illicit enrichment in the Asset Forfeiture Bill as an effective way to address wayward officials as well as fulfill the UNCAC.
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Tax official Rafael Alun Trisambodo (right) arrives on March 1, 2023 at the Jakarta headquarters of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) for questioning over his suspicious wealth. (Antara/Aprillio Akbar)
T
he idea to regulate illicit enrichment through the government-led Asset Forfeiture Bill is gaining ground in anticorruption circles as a way to more effectively handle ostentatious public displays of wealth, such as the recent raft of cases involving mid-level civil servants.
But legislators are not fully convinced of the merits of going down this route, and some have even proposed overhauling additional antigraft laws instead.
The assets bill has been gestating for more than two presidential terms after it was dropped from the House of Representatives’ list of priority legislation in 2012, despite renewed urgency after the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono administration cleaned house at the Finance Ministry’s corrupt taxation directorate general.
Activists at the time maintained that even though some asset recovery measures had been addressed in the 2002 Anticorruption Law and the 2010 Money Laundering Law, neither was implemented adequately nor effectively.
Several attempts were made to convince Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to adopt the legislation during his presidency, but these were followed up only this month when Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly state that the draft bill had been sent to the President for approval.
Antigraft activists believe there is renewed urgency now more than ever to regulate illicit enrichment after the recent spate of incidents involving officials in the tax, excise, land management and other administrative divisions.
Zaenur Rohman, a researcher at the Center for Anticorruption Studies at Gadjah Mada University (UGM) and an antigraft activist, said regulating illicit enrichment was part of the 2003 United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), which Indonesia had ratified without introducing specific regulations on this form of corruption.
