The Jakarta Post, Bogor, West Java | Mon, 08/02/2010 8:56 AM

The House of Representatives working committee deliberating the money laundering bill has agreed to grant six state bodies the right to investigate money laundering, a government official says.

Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK) chairman Yunus Husein said Friday those bodies were the National Police, the Attorney General’s Office (AGO), the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), the Finance Ministry’s tax and custom offices and the National Narcotics Agency (BNN).

The draft stipulates those six bodies can investigate alleged money laundering practices if the initial crimes are related to their authority, such as the KPK for corruption and the tax office for tax evasion.

“But the draft obliges the PPATK to submit analysis reports to only four of them [the National Police, the AGO, the KPK and the BNN],” Yunus told reporters at a discussion forum at Hotel Sahira Butik in Bogor, West Java.

“The tax and customs offices can carry out investigation by their own initiative,” he said. “The two agencies will not be given access to get PPATK analysis reports,” he added.

Yunus said a multi-investigator system was necessary to optimize investigations to curb rampant money laundering practices in the country. “In other countries, money laundering cases are also investigated by multiple investigators,” he said.

Currently, the National Police is the only body in the country granted the right to investigate money laundering activities. The police’s investigative monopoly is widely regarded as the main factor behind the low number of prosecutions, particularly in cases involving high-ranking police officials.

Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) says only 8 percent of suspicious transactions reported by the PPATK to the police were followed up by investigators. As of December 2009, only 26 cases had been legally processed under the 2003 Money Laundering Law.

The PPATK reported recently there were 55,259 suspicious transactions in banks and other financial institutions in the first six months of 2010 alone — an increase from 46,559 transactions recorded in 2009.

The working committee has also agreed to expand the authority of the center, from previously only accepting reports from banks and non-bank financial institutions on suspicious transactions to a body with the authority to scrutinize the source of those transactions. “The PPATK also will have the right to request financial service providers to reveal all data regarding their suspicious customers.” (rdf)