The Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK) revealed that there were allegations of suspicious funds being received by political parties related to green financial crime.
According to Ivan Yustiavandana, Chairman of PPATK said, Green financial crime is an environmentally based crime in which natural resources are illegally destroyed and the results are enjoyed by a handful of parties and not for the people.
According to PPATK’s presentation, there are dozens of analyzes related to green financial crime which reached IDR 4.8 trillion in 2022.
This green financial crime is detrimental to the world including Indonesia because it destroys the world order and threatens environmental sustainability.
According to Ivan, this activity has enormous value and has long been of concern to the government and the international community.
Green financial crime funds flowing to political parties
Ivan stated that the flow of funds is estimated to be worth up to IDR 1 trillion and has been reported to the General Elections Commission (KPU) and the General Election Supervisory Agency (BAWASLU).
“One of PPATK’s findings, which was discovered some time ago, was that IDR 1 trillion of green financial crime money went to political parties,” said Ivan, on August 8, 2023.
PPATK is currently focusing on investigating criminal acts of green financial crimes, and suspected that currently none of the election participants are clean of these crimes.
“Because PPATK is now focusing on green financial crime, this is the busiest. So what happened? Well, we found that there seemed to be no accounts from political contestants who were not exposed,” he said.
PPATK also found that there was a risk of money laundering (TPPU) in campaign funds in a number of provinces.
According to PPATK, the highest areas where money laundering took place in East Java (9), DKI Jakarta (8.9), West Sumatra (7.91), West Java (7.57), Papua (7.3), South Sulawesi (7.24), and North Sumatra (7.02) ).
Ivan also added that there are funds from criminal acts that have been flowing throughout the election stages, and PPATK are seriously monitoring each party’s finances.
“In a clean context, the duties and authorities of PPATK are how much money originating from this crime enters this political contestation for the money laundering crimes to happen,” he said.
On the other hand, Natsir Kongah, a spokesperson for PPATK, said that his institution continues to cooperate with the KPU and BAWASLU regarding reports on alleged flows of funds that have been made. However, he did not provide further details on the names of the parties.
“That illustrates that money from forestry/environmental crimes is used for political interests,” said Natsir.
KPU’s solution to money laundering problem
Idham Kholik, Head of the Election Implementation Technical Division, said that he had asked various political parties to set up special accounts for campaign funds to facilitate supervision.
“We have facilitated many political parties in the context of opening bank accounts, both state-owned banks and non-state-owned or private banks,” he said.
This solution refers to Law Number 7 of 2017 concerning Elections, all forms of donations in the form of money must be placed in a special account before being used for campaign activities.
In addition, this account is intended to facilitate oversight of the funding of election participants to prevent fraud from occurring, as well as to assist political parties to establish party financial accountability.
