The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Thu, 07/22/2010 9:10 AM

The government’s effort to curb money laundering is progressing at a snail’s pace and prosecutions remain low because the authorities are busy in semantic disputes over terminology and procedures, say independent observers.

Critics agree that because the national police are inherently corrupt, all efforts by the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK) to provide leads on suspicious transactions that indicate money laundering activity will end in failure.

The police have investigated only 8 percent of all reports on “suspicious transactions”, PPATK said, while the police contend that the center’s findings were based on misinterpretations of “unusual transactions”.

The center previously reported that there were 55,259 suspicious transactions in banks and non-bank financial institutions in the first six months of 2010 — an increase over 46,559 suspicious transactions reported in 2009 and 23,056 suspicious transactions reported in 2008.

National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Edward Aritonang told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday that all reports of suspicious transactions from the PPATK had been followed up by the police. Most of the police’s internal investigations of the suspicious transactions found no proof of illegal conduct, he said.

“The problem is the PPATK often categorizes ‘unusual’ transactions as ‘suspicious’ transactions,” Edward said.

The law requires that the PPATK, deem a transaction “suspicious” when a transaction’s value does not fit the profile, characteristics or common transaction pattern of a  bank account owner.

The center monitors all tran-sactions that exceed Rp 500 million (US$55,000).

Bambang Soesatyo, a member of the House of Representatives Commission III that supervises law enforcement, confirmed Edward’s statement, saying that most of the PPATK’s findings did not require further investigation.

Bambang said most of the “unusual transactions” involved land purchases or inheritances.

Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) coordinator Danang Widoyoko said that the terminology dispute between the police and PPATK was a sham.

Danang said that the police were not transparent when defining suspicious transactions nor when detailing internal procedures for handling the PPATK’s reports.

“We have no idea what standards are used by the police to categorize a suspicious transaction as a money laundering,” he told the Post.

Danang said significant progress in combating money laundering could be made if PPATK was authorized to investigate the suspicious transactions, as is proposed in a draft amendment of the law

on money laundering now before the House.

The law must grant the PPATK the right to temporarily block transactions to trace the legality of the funds, Danang said.

Chairman of the National Law Commission, Frans Hendra Winarta, said without investigative authority the PPATK had no alternative but to submit its reports to the police.

“We know that the police aren’t clean,” he told the Post.

He said that the country had a relatively good legal system to combat money laundering, but unfortunately law enforcement was weak.

“The law enforcement is weak because this country has yet to have a good and clean government,” Frans said.