August 8, 2025 | 02:41 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The PPATK is breaking the rules by blocking dormant accounts in banks. There is the potential for misuse of power.
IN addition to analyzing financial transactions and preventing money laundering, the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK) now has a new responsibility: closing and opening bank accounts. Using the pretext that accounts could be being used by terrorists, gamblers, and money-laundering criminals, the PPATK is closing passive or dormant accounts.
Since May 15, 2025, the PPATK has frozen 140,000 bank accounts, which have not been used for any transactions for three months. The funds in these accounts total Rp428.61 billion. The PPATK claims that these hundreds of thousands of dormant accounts are suspicious and are being used for crimes.
In an audit of bank accounts in 2020, the PPATK found that one million accounts were used to transfer the proceeds of crime. Of these million accounts, 50,000 contained illegal funds. There has been no transparent explanation of the criteria or transactions considered as suspicious. The owners of the bank accounts caught up in this operation were surprised because they were suddenly unable to withdraw money or make transactions from their bank accounts.
Following protests of these arbitrary actions, the PPATK unfroze 28 million accounts. President Prabowo Subianto summoned PPATK Chief Ivan Yustiavandana to order an end to the blocking of accounts.
Because of all this, we are increasingly wondering if the PPATK based its actions on the rules and comprehensive analysis. If a policy can easily be revoked without any explanation or convincing argument, the Indonesian people will increasingly suspect that the PPATK is violating people’s most personal rights.
The way the PPATK blocked these accounts endangers the economy. If people panic because they feel the state is spying on them, they can immediately withdraw their money from banks. A rush is the low point of public trust in the banks. After all, the main business of banks is public trust.
If we look at the reopening of the 28 million accounts that had been frozen, it is clear that the PPATK did not investigate the matter carefully: were these dormant accounts really being used for illegal transactions, or were they simply dormant because the owners had never used them? The PPATK ignored the fact that in the last two years, people’s buying power has slumped because of the stagnant economy. It is possible that account holders did not touch their bank accounts in order to stop things getting worse.
Furthermore, according to the regulations, the PPATK does not have the authority to close accounts. According to Law No. 8/2010 on the Prevention and Eradication of Money Laundering, the duties of the PPATK are limited to preventing the banking system from being used for crime. The PPATK only has the authority to investigate suspicious accounts and report them to the law enforcement authorities. It is the police, prosecutors, or Corruption Eradication Commission that have the right to act against the owners of suspicious bank accounts for the purposes of an investigation.
As well as not following the rules, the PPATK action could open the door to extortion. The PPATK could freeze an account, claiming it is suspicious, then its officials could bargain with the owners over a fee for it to be reopened.
Whatever the pretext, the PPATK has damaged public trust in a crucial economic instrument. What the PPATK has done increasingly underlines the fact that government officials see and treat citizens as objects that have no right to privacy or freedom.
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