Monitoring Desk
JAKARTA: Indonesian parliament has passed into law a bilateral extradition agreement with Singapore.
Jakarta expects to help officials bring to justice people accused of stashing offshore thousands and billions of dollars of state money. The absence of the extradition treaty has been an acute problem for Indonesia, which has complained about the difficulty after some of the fugitives accused of embezzling huge sums during the 1997-1998 Asian financial issues.
Indonesia has said that under the extradition treaty, signed by the countries’ leaders in January, people who have committed 31 types of crime will be liable to be extradited, and it will apply to offenses committed up to 18 years ago. Indonesia said the agreement would also mean that people could not escape justice by changing their citizenship.
After parliament’s approval, Indonesia’s law minister Yasonna Laoly said that the law would give legal certainty for the two countries in extraditing fugitives.
Indonesian efforts to prevent suspected criminals from fleeing overseas
Singapore has said that the agreement will also be helpful to Indonesia’s efforts to prevent suspected criminals from fleeing overseas and for them to be apprehended in Indonesia. The country had set up a so-called BLBI task force that is going after $8 billion of bailout funds given to bank owners and borrowers after the Asian financial issues in the late 1990s that were never repaid.
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono Indonesian President and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong oversaw the signing of the extradition pact and defence cooperation agreement in 2007, but Indonesia’s parliament never ratified it.
