TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
KPK seeks to impoverish corruption convicts through assets bill
The country’s antigraft body agrees with President Prabowo Subianto’s suggestion that those convicted of corruption should have whatever assets obtained from illicit practices seized, as long as the method is regulated in a law on asset forfeiture.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) spokesperson Tessa Mahadika Sugiarto (front, right) sits next to the commission's investigation director Asep Guntur Rahayu (front, left) ahead of a press briefing on the arrest of Jimmy Masrin (back, center) and Susy Mira Dewi Sugiarta (back, left) in a corruption case at the Indonesian Export Financing Agency (LPEI) at the KPK headquarters in Jakarta on March 20. (Antara/Indrianto Eko Suwarso)
T
he Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) stands with President Prabowo Subianto through its support of a plan to have graft convicts stripped of all of their ill-gotten assets through a law on asset forfeiture, which has seen little progress on its deliberation for over a decade.
Impoverishing corruption convicts is not only the wish of the antigraft body, spokesperson Tessa Mahardika said, but also the hope of the Indonesian public in general.
“This form of impoverishment definitely needs to be regulated by law,” Tessa said on the sideline of a press briefing on Wednesday.
“But what the regulation will look like still needs to be discussed further among law enforcement institutions, judicial authorities and the executive and legislative branches,” he continued.
The KPK made the statement in response to a remark from President Prabowo during an interview with six editors-in-chief at his private residence in Bogor regency, West Java, on April 6. He was asked about his thoughts on how the passage of the asset forfeiture bill by the House of Representatives could make Indonesia’s graft busting more effective.
Antigraft activists see the bill as a key piece of legislation that could reinvigorate the country’s fight against corruption by ensuring a more effective mechanism for seizing assets obtained from illicit practices and returning them to state coffers.
But the process for passing this mechanism into law has been moving sluggishly for more than a decade after it was dropped from the House’s list of priority legislation in 2012. In May of 2023, then-president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo sent a draft of the bill as well as a presidential letter to the legislature greenlighting its deliberation, but to no avail.
