The criminal act of corruption, especially related to corporate crime is oftentimes hard to be revealed because the multilevel and complicated structure of ownership to hide the beneficial ownership from a corporate. Thus, the disclosure of Beneficial Ownership becomes an important agenda that must be overseen. “The opportunity for Beneficial Ownership advocacy is wide open with the positive momentum by the issuance of Presidential Regulation no 13/2018 that becomes regulatory umbrella in beneficial ownership regulation in Indonesia,” said Aryanto Nugroho, the Advocacy and Network Manager of PWYP Indonesia and the workshop facilitator namely “Understanding the Beneficial Ownership and Mapping the Corporate Ownership,” held by PATTIRO, LBH Semarang, and WALHI Jateng in Semarang, last 27-28 March.
Aryanto explained, in practice, the mapping of corporate ownership is not simple. In several cases, many indirect corporate ownerships have founded, that using intermediaries to own share in other companies. That scheme enables the individual to avoid tax. “With the Beneficial Ownership disclosure, the individual that not detected can be revealed,” said Aryanto.
Related to the disclosure of Beneficial Ownership data, the lawyer of LBH Semarang and also the participant of the workshop Ivan Wagner asked the certainty of public access to BO data in Indonesia. “According to the Presidential Regulation no 13/2018, the regulation on Access of Beneficial Ownership information is regulated by the Public Information Disclosure, which in order to gain that information, the public should do public access test. According to the old cases, the public access test in each region is different,” said Ivan.
Aryanto acknowledged that there are still some weaknesses in the presidential regulation. In fact, according to him, this presidential regulation is merely the opening gate to advocate the BO disclosure. As the globally practice, the BO data disclosure is not only implemented across the government institutions, but the government should implement the proactive disclosure policy for the BO data, so the public can fully access.
Adding to the Beneficial Ownership presentation, Rizky Ananda, the researcher of PWYP Indonesia explained how to identify the politically exposed person (PEP) in the corporate structure ownership. PEP is interpreted as the government official or the member of the political party who is influential toward the policy of the state or political party. “The finding of PEP in corporate ownership structure indicates the potency of conflict of interest. For instance, the government official in mining who own shares or appointed as commissioner in mining companies. There is a huge chance for the regulators to compose policy that would give benefits the industry,” said Rizky.
At the end of the workshop, the participants arranged the follow-up act for advocacy work. One of them was Muhammad Syufii, the participant from PATTIRO Semarang which will analyze the data of bidding winner in Semarang to see the potency of monopoly in certain companies and the indication of corruption practices. While Ghofar, the participant from WALHI in Central Java will contextualize them with the mining license and local election.