On 27 August, demonstrators led by the Aliansi Masyarakat Pati Bersatu, alongside other organizations, took to the streets with a single demand: pass the asset forfeiture bill. The public’s frustration about it is understandable – the bill has been in parliamentary limbo for almost two decades. Its first draft dates back to 2008 and has been on and off each year’s national legislation program (Prolegnas) since then.
At the meeting with protesters, House of Representatives (DPR) Deputy Speaker Sufmi Dasco Ahmad promised the bill would pass by December, even raising the stakes by saying he would resign if it doesn’t.
Is this a cause for celebration?
To regular Indonesians watching an endless parade of high-profile graft trials, the logic behind the bill seems straightforward: if someone steals from the public fund, the state must seize their loot and return it. The people’s ideal punishment for graft offenders is not just temporary incarceration, but also total financial destitution.
But in today’s Indonesia, the math of corruption infamously favors the offender. A corrupt official sentenced to five years in prison often serves only three after remissions and early parole. If that person has shielded tens or hundreds of billions of rupiah in hidden wealth, their prison stay becomes little more than a temporary occupational hazard. That money can buy comfortable cell upgrades inside. Outside, vast fortunes await their release.
Even worse, the country’s legal framework has repeatedly allowed former graft convicts to run for public office again. Once they win their seats, they step right back into the corridors of power they previously abused.
The asset forfeiture bill promises to break this cycle by introducing a mechanism known as non-conviction-based asset forfeiture. This mechanism allows the state to move against an individual’s ill-gotten wealth without first securing a criminal conviction. Instead, a separate civil proceeding tries the property itself (in rem), not the offender. This court evaluates whether an individual’s assets were acquired through legal and legitimate means. If a suspect flees the country, dies before trial, remains a fugitive, or avoids criminal conviction on technicalities, the state can still confiscate their unexplained wealth through a reversed burden of proof.
Yet, while the moral impulse driving this bill is indisputable, implementing it within Indonesia’s current judicial landscape presents a dangerous double-edged sword. We at The Reformist caution that an uncritical rush to enact this law without robust safeguards risks handing an already flawed state apparatus an unprecedented weapon for political repression.
The existing toolkit and current judicial realities
First, it is important to dismantle the myth that Indonesian law enforcement is currently powerless to seize criminal assets. Existing statutes — specifically the Anti-Corruption Law (UU Tipikor) and the Anti-Money Laundering Law (UU TPPU) — already grant prosecutors extensive powers to confiscate assets, levy restitution orders, and seize property linked to corruption convictions.
Consider high-profile cases (e.g., Harvey Moeis, Surya Darmadi) where prosecutors successfully sought multi-hundred-billion-rupiah fines and restitution payments alongside prison sentences. The legal mechanisms to strip convicted embezzlers of their ill-gotten gains exist and have been executed. The core bottleneck in asset recovery today is not a complete absence of statutory authority, but rather selective enforcement, weak investigative tracing, and political unwillingness to pursue financial flows to their ultimate destinations.
Second, and far more critically, anti-corruption enforcement in Indonesia does not occur in a pristine, neutral vacuum. Indonesia’s law enforcement apparatus remains deeply politicized, characterized by selective prosecutions, vague legal articles, and weaponized investigations. The Reformist has extensively documented glaring irregularities and dubious legal logic in recent high-stakes graft cases, in which political opposition, inconvenient ministers, and independent actors are targeted under elastic interpretations of “state financial losses”.
The best part is, this bill does not limit itself to assets linked to corruption or illicit enrichment, but assets tied to any ‘criminal’ activity. This means theoretically, the police could seize your car for the crime of running a red light. It’s an exaggeration, of course, but not theoretically improbable.
In a judicial ecosystem where law enforcement can be weaponized against political rivals, the asset forfeiture bill introduces a terrifying potential for abuse.
Imagine a scenario where an administration seeks to neutralize a prominent political adversary or an independent civic leader. Under standard criminal law, the state must meet a high burden of proof to secure a conviction. But under a broad asset forfeiture regime, the government could launch a criminal investigation while freezing or confiscating the target’s bank accounts, business holdings, and personal property in a parallel civil asset court.
By shifting the burden onto the individual to prove the absolute legality of every asset they own, the state forces targets to fight for their innocence on two complex, costly fronts simultaneously. Deprived of their financial assets overnight, targeted individuals are effectively stripped of the resources necessary to mount a proper legal defense, destroying their businesses, reputations, and political viability long before a single criminal verdict is reached.
The bill must be accompanied by airtight safeguards
We all despise corruption, and we recognize the urgent need to make graft economically unviable. However, we must ensure that the tools designed to eradicate corruption do not become the very instruments used to dismantle democracy and silence dissent.
If the House of Representatives (DPR) is to pass the asset forfeiture bill, it must conduct the deliberation process with absolute public transparency, not rush it through midnight legislative sessions behind closed doors. The House must also make its latest draft publicly accessible. Anti-corruption advocacy groups, while supporting the bill’s passage for years, have said the latest draft they obtained is missing key provisions.
To prevent abuse, the legislative framework must embed robust procedural safeguards into every stage of the forfeiture process. Prosecutors must meet a high evidentiary threshold, requiring clear, verifiable predicate evidence of illegal activity rather than mere suspicion or anonymous tips, before freezing any property. The court must operate with strict judicial independence and mandatory timelines to prevent political actors from indefinitely tying up an opponent’s resources. It must also mandate immediate, full financial compensation and public exoneration whenever the state fails to prove its case.
The fight against corruption requires courage and potent legal tools, but above all, it requires unwavering adherence to the rule of law. A tool designed to restore justice must never be crafted in a way that allows authority to abuse it.