Taufik Darusman – Didik Setyo Handono, a judge at the South Jakarta District Court, deserves a medal: He is the first judge to apply the legal principle of reverse burden of proof since the anti-money laundering law came into force 11 years ago.

Earlier this month, Handono's goundbreaking decision led to Bahasyim Assifie, a former tax director, receiving 10 years in jail for money laundering and corruption. The panel of judges, led by Handono, found that Bahasyim had failed to prove that the Rp 66 billion ($7.5 million) he had amassed had come from legitimate sources.

When Bahasyim produced documents to show he had invested money in the Philippines and China and ran several businesses at home, Handono dismissed the evidence as nonsense and handed down the verdict.

The legal principle shifts the burden of proof from the prosecution to the defense, in effect removing the presumption of innocence.

In practice, reverse burden of proof is a simple affair. In corruption cases, it requires defendants to present evidence or witnesses to show that their wealth came from legitimate sources. However, its application requires special skills on the part of judges and prosecutors to pressure the accused to present the evidence. No less important is their competence to assess whether the evidence is credible.

"The [Bahasyim] verdict can be a model for other judges when they deal with similar cases in the future," Hifdzil Alim, from the Center for Anti-Corruption Studies (Pukat) at Yogyakarta's Gadjah Mada University, told the Jakarta Globe the day after the ruling.

In fact, Handono's unprecedented decision is now gaining momentum in higher places. Vice President Boediono, who has been appointed by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to coordinate senior law enforcers in getting to the bottom of the Gayus Tambunan mess, is game. Last week, he made it clear that the government would apply the reverse burden of proof principle to recover the disgraced taxman's millions of dollars in assets.

Gayus was sentenced to seven years in prison and a Rp 300 million fine for bribing law enforcers to help him evade earlier money-laundering charges. The former middle-ranking official is thought to have amassed more than Rp 100 billion in bribes from companies seeking to dodge their taxes. But the court ruling did not give the government the green light to seize Gayus's assets, prompting law-enforcement agencies to pursue separate money-laundering charges against him.

"With reverse burden of proof, money embezzled by corrupt state officials can be recovered more quickly," Boediono said during a news conference. For good measure, he singled out the Gayus case as ripe for this legal principle.

Darmono, a deputy attorney general, went a step further, saying last week that his office would not hesitate to confiscate allegedly ill-gotten gains of government employees. "The Attorney General's Office will then require government employees to prove that they acquired their assets legitimately," he said.

Antigraft bodies like Indonesia Corruption Watch and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) have praised Handono and his fellow judges for making this breakthrough in the fight against corruption.

A number of legal experts have already come out to suggest that the principle could be applied in the case of high-ranking police officials who have reportedly accumulated enormous bank accounts.

For the record, the independent Information Commission has recently endorsed the ICW's demand for the police to disclose publicly the suspect bank accounts. The commission's decision is being contested in court by the police, but should the ruling favor the commission, one can only imagine the political fallout that will result.

To be sure, reverse burden of proof is at present not incorporated in the Criminal Code. This has prompted experts such as Hifdzil to call on lawmakers to make the principle legally applicable in corruption cases.

One of finest tenets of the law states that it is far worse to convict an innocent man than let a guilty man go free. But it is perhaps worse still to let a guilty man go free because of the absence of laws.

Large-scale corruption has woven itself into the fabric of our society beyond rational proportions. As such, it is a source of comfort to many that reverse of burden of proof is now set to play a leading role in eradicating one of our worst social ills.

[Taufik Darusman is a veteran journalist and co-founder of Indonesian Legislative Watch (Teliti).]