Ary Hermawan, Jakarta – President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has ordered all government departments to take a firm action against thousands of secretive bank accounts containing some Rp 30 trillion (about US$3.3 billion) in public funds.
"The President will raise the issue at the next Cabinet meeting as he wants the management of state funds to be put in order and made accountable in line with the principles of good governance," Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said after meeting with the President and Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) chairman Anwar Nasution at the Presidential palace Friday.
As part of the clampdown on dubious accounts, all government departments will be required to report all of their bank accounts to the Finance Ministry and clarify their purpose and status, she said.
The BPK uncovered a total of 4,656 undeclared accounts containing some Rp 31.2 trillion in its audits between 2004 and 2006.
In 2004, the agency discovered 957 government-related bank accounts – most of them escrow accounts – containing about Rp 20 trillion that had not declared in the government's annual budget accounts. The number rose to 1,303 accounts containing Rp 8.5 trillion in 2005 and 2,396 accounts containing Rp 2.7 trillion in 2006.
The audit agency categorized these accounts as questionable as they had never been reported to the Finance Ministry. It is partly for this reason that the BPK has for years been slapping disclaimers on the government's budget accounts.
"A thorough overhaul and examination of these questionable accounts needs to be prioritized by the government," BPK director Anwar said during the meeting with the President.
He said the government would likely once again receive a disclaimer to its 2006 budget accounts as it had yet to put the new state accounting standards into effect.
The Finance Ministry has issued two special regulations to tackle the problem. The first requires state offices to seek the ministry's approval before opening any government-related accounts as a preventative measure, while the second allows it to close existing accounts that are deemed superfluous.
"The ministries will be required to report all bank accounts they have opened before the issuance of this regulation to the Finance Ministry, and we'll decide whether they are really needed," the ministry's director general for the treasury, Herry Purnomo, told a media conference Friday.
The Finance Ministry has closed 17 dubious accounts opened by its units as a follow up to the BPK's findings, and paid Rp 5.5 trillion from the accounts into the 2006 budget.
The ministry recently announced that it had traced 1,892 questionable accounts worth Rp 9 trillion in several ministries, including 83 dubious accounts holding Rp 49 billion in the Justice and Human Rights Ministry and 23 obscure accounts in the Religious Affairs Ministry.
Many state offices are believed to apply their own rules allowing them to levy various types of fees from the public.