Armando Siahaan – The Golkar Party has protested key points in a money-laundering bill that would have granted unprecedented powers to the agency in charge of flagging violations, warning of the creation of an unchecked superbody.
The bill is currently being deliberated by a special committee within the House of Representatives' Commission III, overseeing legal affairs, and contains articles proposing radical new changes to the functions of the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK).
It seeks, among other things, to grant PPATK officials immunity from criminal or civil liabilities linked to their duties.
It also proposes granting the body the power to investigate money-laundering claims and to wiretap suspects, as well as to freeze their accounts and confiscate funds.
One of the more controversial articles calls for the PPATK to be given the right to breach existing laws on confidentiality in the course of an investigation, while another demand is that it receive a 25 percent commission from all funds recovered from prosecuted money-laundering operations.
A Golkar legislator, however, said the proposed changes went too far. "The PPATK seems to be trying to overreach its authority," Bambang Soesatyo, from Commission III, said on Tuesday.
He argued some of the articles in the bill conflicted directly with existing articles in the Criminal Code, banking laws and various laws on the police and Attorney General's Office.
Bambang said the immunity clause was particularly worrying. "All citizens should be equal before the law," he said. "Granting immunity to PPATK officials for criminal or civil charges would be unconstitutional."
He added that Golkar was also opposed to any calls for the PPATK to be given powers to conduct its own investigations.
The body is currently authorized only to report on suspicious transactions it identifies to the police and AGO, which are then responsible for following up with an investigation as they see fit.
Bambang argued that granting the body the right to carry out its own investigations would only undermine the role of the existing law enforcement agencies and cause overlaps, leading to ineffective probes.
However, antigraft activists have previously made the case for the PPATK to follow up on its own findings. They cite numerous cases where the body has reported on suspicious bank accounts linked to high-ranking police officers, which the force has consistently failed to investigate.
Meanwhile, Bambang also took issue with the clauses on wiretaps and confidentiality breaches. "It doesn't make sense that the PPATK should get a waiver for flouting existing laws or codes of ethics on confidentiality," he said.
Just as offensive, he added, was the idea that the body should get a 25 percent cut of all the laundered funds it managed to recover. All these "extraordinary proposals" pointed to the PPATK trying to cast itself as a superbody answerable only to the president, Bambang said.
"We suspect PPATK chairman Yunus Husein may have an ulterior political agenda," he said. "His appointment to the Judicial Mafia Eradication Task Force means he answers directly to the president, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that people are beginning to question whether the State Palace is pulling the PPATK's strings in a bid to further its own political agenda."
Bambang argued the PPATK should remain true to its original function, which was to help law enforcement agencies collect and analyze data.