A Pertamina petrol station employee fills up a vehicle in Jakarta. A US$12 billion corruption scandal at the Indonesian state-owned energy giant this year triggered widespread outrage. - AFP
JAKARTA: The 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 via 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 (April 9).
“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.
Answering the question posed by the editors-in-chief, Prabowo said that he shared the public anger about corruption. He also said that it was only fair for corruption perpetrators to have their assets seized by an equivalent value of the state losses they incurred.
“I’m of the opinion that we should negotiate first and [ask them] to return what they stole,” the President said. “On the other hand, it’s also human nature not to admit wrongdoing, so it’s only fair that the state seize their assets so we can recover the losses.”
But Prabowo also questioned if assets obtained by the graft convicts before they committed the illicit practices or held public office should also be seized. He argued that such a treatment would also harm the welfare of the perpetrators’ family members, who could be innocent.
“[I doubt] if it’s fair for a child to also suffer from the sins of their parents. I need to ask legal experts for their opinion on this, but it’s true that we need a stronger deterrent effect [against corruption],” he said.
Tessa of the KPK said that prevailing laws, such as the Money Laundering Law, of which some articles had been amended in the new Criminal Code that will take effect in 2026, had regulated mechanisms to handle graft cases wherein family members benefit from corruption. “There needs to be further discussion,” Tessa said, “but generally speaking, the KPK supports the President in impoverishing corruption convicts.”
Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) criticised Prabowo’s statement, saying that family members of graft convicts are often involved in the illicit acts, either directly or indirectly. “Prabowo needs to see the reality that injustice is often felt by victims of corruption,” the group wrote in a statement on Friday.
“As a president who often calls for war against corruption, Prabowo should see that corruption […] is handled by a legal system that doesn’t reflect deterrence or prevention.” The ICW called on Prabowo to expedite the deliberation of the asset forfeiture bill.
As deliberation for the assets bill saw little progress for more than ten years, hopes were high that when Prabowo took office, after repeatedly emphasising a war on corruption during his campaign, that the House would include the bill in this year’s National Legislation Programme (Prolegnas) priority list.
All parties represented in the house except for one are part of his ruling Onward Indonesia Coalition (KIM). But the House has not included the bill in the priority legislation list.
Prabowo’s other suggestions to fight corruption have also been met with skepticism by antigraft activists. One of the ideas, raised in December of last year, was pardoning corruption convicts if they return what they stole.
Another proposal made by Prabowo in March was to build an island prison for corrupt convicts guarded by sharks. During the interview with the editors-in-chief, he said that his administration was “still looking for the right island”.
The President also said that his administration had a plan to allocate Rp 12 trillion (US$712 million) from the state budget to give judges across the country a significant pay raise to make them “unbribable”. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
