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View all search resultsRecovering stolen assets
The government can now trace and hope to recover billions of dollars of stolen assets believed to be hidden in Switzerland.
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T
he government can now trace and hope to recover billions of dollars of stolen assets believed to be hidden in Switzerland, formerly notorious as a tax haven, by corrupt Indonesian people and tax evaders over the past decades.
This asset recovery can be realized after the House of Representatives ratified on Tuesday the Indonesia-Swiss Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) in Criminal Matters. Implementing regulations should be enacted soon to make the law fully effective.
The long-awaited agreement, which was initiated in 2010, will serve as the legal basis for the two countries to cooperate in detecting, freezing and confiscating assets gained through such crimes as corruption, drug trafficking and money laundering.
The MLA will simplify and accelerate mutual legal assistance procedures, in particular by reducing formal requirements and setting out in detail the requirements for mutual assistance requests.
Yet more significant is that both countries agreed to apply a retroactive clause in the agreement, meaning that it can be used to handle criminal acts committed decades ago, especially in 1967-1998, when Indonesia was under an authoritarian and perceived to be corrupt administration.
The government had earlier signed similar MLA agreements with Hong Kong, China, ASEAN, Australia, China, South Korea, India, Vietnam, United Arab Emirates and Iran.
The MLA will further strengthen the authority of the Directorate General of Taxation to search or track Indonesians and their illicit assets hidden in Switzerland because the government also has signed and ratified the global treaty of Automatic Exchange of Information (AEI) on tax matters.
