Liputan6.com, Jakarta – Indonesia is listed in the top 10 countries that have illicit financial flows (IFF) with a value of more than Rp 2,400 trillion in the past 10 years.
Indonesia’s Publish What You Pay (PWYP) coordinator, Maryati Abdullah, quoted from 2015 Global Financial Integrity (GFI) data, reported that Indonesia was ranked in the top 7 in the world as a country that has the highest ‘dark’ money flow to tax havens.
In the 2003-2012 timeframe, she said, Indonesia was recorded to have disbursed slush funds amounting to the US $ 187.84 billion or around Rp2,442 trillion (exchange rate of Rp13,000 per US dollar). That means, on average per year the total flow of illicit money in Indonesia is Rp 244.20 trillion.
“Countries or activities in tax havens or countries that are in the top 10 illicit cash flow are the average countries that are rich in natural resources because this industry is a soft land for illicit money flows, money laundering, tax corruption, blurring of corporate documents, “Maryati said at the Transparency International Indonesia (TII) office, Jakarta, Sunday (10/4/2016).
PWYP data sourced from GFI 2015, China is the country at the top with illicit funds flowing through the US $ 1.25 trillion. Followed by the 2nd position is Russia with a value of US $ 937.86 billion, and ranked 3rd Mexico with a flow of illicit funds of US $ 514.26 billion.
India and Malaysia are ranked 4th and 5th with a value of US $ 439.59 billion and Rp 394.87 billion in slush funds. The flow of illicit money from Brazil reached US $ 217.10 billion and placed it at number 6, while Thailand was ranked 8th at the US $ 171.68 billion.
In the distended position there is the 9th Nigeria and the 10th South Africa, each of which has a slush fund of US $ 157.45 and the US $ 122.15 billion in the 2003-2012 period.
Maryati continued, the flow of illicit funds in the mining sector reached around Rp.23.89 trillion. Consisting of Rp. 21.33 trillion came from illegal trade transactions and Rp.2.56 trillion came from the flow of ‘hot’ money.
“The tax ratio in the mining sector is only 9.4 percent, indicating the prevalence of tax avoidance and evasion practices in this sector,” said Maryati.
On the same occasion, Secretary-General of TII, Dadang Trisasongko admitted, the 2015 GFI report said that every year developing countries lose the US $ 1 trillion due to corruption, tax evasion, and money laundering.
He said GFI predicts the potential for tax evaporating from Indonesia because of the practice of escaping illicit funds amounting to nearly Rp 200 trillion every year.
“The illicit money flow from Indonesia is high due to the low level of compliance of taxpayers (WP) of the rich, super-rich and corporate groups, the high prevalence of tax corruption, embezzlement practices and tax evasion with complicated financial engineering methods to the low performance of tax authorities here,” said Dadang (Fik/Ahm)