korannews.com – Mahfud MD , the Minister of Coordinating Political, Legal, and Security Affairs, has denied that there were any discrepancies between the data he presented and the data presented by Finance Minister Sri Mulyani in the Commission XI meeting the day before.
During the public hearing with the Indonesian House of Representative’s Commission III on Wednesday, March 29, 2023, which lasted from 3:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., Mahfud MD faced a barrage of questions from Commission III members regarding the discrepancies between his presentation and that of Finance Minister Sri Mulyani .
In response, Mahfud asserted that the data he presented was based on the investigation by the National Coordination Committee for the Prevention and Eradication of Money Laundering (TPPU) and was the most comprehensive available.
“There is no different data. Only Sri Mulyani explained it this way. If the PPATK is a group, for example, Rafael has a group. When examined by Sri Mulyani , only one was taken. So this is a group; it’s called money laundering ,” he stressed, emphasizing that the data was the same but the interpretation was different.
“Like picking one apple, ‘oh this is tax, wow, there are so many companies.’ But it’s the tax that is calculated, not the money laundering ,” Mahfud said.
Furthermore, he explained that there were also administrative obstacles that made it challenging to uncover money laundering cases, which required certain report letters to be physically delivered to the Finance Minister. Nevertheless, Mahfud mentioned that not all of these letters received follow-ups from Sri Mulyani ‘s subordinates.
” Sri Mulyani ‘s data is wrong, yes. The original letter was sent by hand. This cannot be submitted by mail because it is sensitive. So it was done by hand,” he said.
At the press conference following the public hearing, Chairman of Commission III Ahmad Sahroni confirmed Mahfud’s statement and said that the data he held was authentic. “There were 300 letters given by Finance Minister, but not followed up. So the data is different from what Finance Minister has. So the synchronization will be combined to be known by the public,” said Roni, who is commonly called by his nickname.
He also added that the two parties would soon meet to synchronize the data. “To find the crime, it is still a long step. What we want to know are the details of the transactions that are suspected of being money laundering . There are 491 people, as Mr. Menko mentioned earlier. Therefore, if there is a Finance Minister, we will sit down together to present the openness that Mr. Menko has conveyed,” said Roni.
During the public hearing with Commission III of the DPR on March 29, 2023, Mahfud MD presented details of the results of the examination by the National Committee for the Prevention and Eradication of TPPU.
“The total number of entities is 491 people (Kemenkeu ASN). Don’t just talk about Rafael, there is a network here,” Mahfud said in the open meeting, which was broadcast online.
However, Mahfud clarified that these entities were presented in aggregate form, and therefore the names of those involved in TPPU would not be disclosed to the public unless they were undergoing legal processing.
“There is a provision in the law that forbids mentioning someone’s identity, the name of the company, account number, identity profile of the reported value, or the purpose of the transaction, all of which cannot be mentioned,” he said.***
