National News - September 07, 2007
Desy Nurhayati, The Jakarta Post, Nusa Dua
It will not require an inter-governmental agreement to find and recover state assets stolen and kept by Indonesians in Swiss banks, a Swiss investigating magistrate said Thursday.
Jean Bernard Schmid, an investigating magistrate in Geneva, Switzerland, said his country would offer help to any country whose assets had been stolen and deposited in a Swiss bank account.
"We don't need a government-to-government treaty to process the recovery of assets that are allegedly looted by a criminal," Schmid said.
"As long as the requesting country has secured strong evidence that the assets in the Swiss bank are crime proceeds, we can directly freeze the assets.
"We are also able to trace banking transactions conducted by the owner of the accounts and seize the related documents."
A lack of legal assistance and bilateral treaties have hampered Indonesia's efforts to freeze and recover its assets sent overseas by corrupt businessmen.
Schmid said the requesting state would not need to wait until its court ruled a person was guilty for stealing money.
A request to freeze the assets could be proposed during the investigation process, he said.
"If (the state) waits until the person is convicted, the money in the bank accounts could have been re-invested or moved to other countries ... (making it) difficult to trace."
Pascal Gossin, chief of the international legal assistance section with Switzerland's federal department of justice and police said his country had enacted a regulation in 1983 giving it authority to help foreign countries find and recover stolen funds.
He said before the 1983 International Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters (IMAC) law was enacted, Switzerland faced difficulties handling assets embezzled or stolen from abroad.
"The main problem was to find a way to return such assets quickly to their rightful owner.
"And we had to take into account any justified claim filed in Switzerland against these funds," he said.
Switzerland has a comprehensive set of policies to fight crime and corruption at national and international levels.
As a major international financial center, Switzerland has a fundamental interest in ensuring illicitly acquired assets do not find a place in its banks.
The country also wants its banking secrecy laws not to protect assets with criminal origins.
"Our government has therefore put in place a comprehensive range of legal instruments and measures for identifying, blocking and returning assets with criminal origins," Gossin said.
The Swiss government has the power to block assets in order to assist the country trying to recover funds.
"Legal instruments deployed for preventing entry of illegally acquired assets and for identifying, blocking and returning them (come under) the criminal law, money laundering provisions, mutual legal assistance and banking regulations."
Gossin said over the past 20 years, Switzerland had returned US$1.6 billion.
No comprehensive data is available regarding the amount of Indonesia's assets allegedly embezzled to Swiss banks.
Eduard Cornellis William Neloe, a former president director of Bank Mandiri, is a suspect in a corruption case involving the bank's credit disbursements.
His $5.2 million kept in a Swiss bank account was allegedly gained illegally, but was frozen in 2005.
