On Wednesday, 19 December 2018, Pusat Studi Hukum dan Kebijakan Indonesia (PSHK or the Indonesian Foundation for Law and Policy Studies) hosted a FKP event, consisting of two subjects: institutional approach in regulations reform in Indonesia by M. Nur Solikhin, and Presidential Decree no. 13 regarding the beneficial owner of corporations in combating money laundering and terrorism by Yunus Husein.Nur Solikhin (PSHK Indonesia) opened the session with the current conditions of regulations in Indonesia. In general, the quality of regulations has improved from year to year. However, some main issues still exist, such as regulations’ incompatibility with national direction of development, incompatibility with material content, ineffectiveness in solving problems, excessive number of regulations (hyper-regulation), and overlapping Institutional authority. Quoting a 2012 OECD report, Solikhin believes that Indonesia needs an institution to evaluate the implementation of legislation. Other recommendations include the revision of Law Number 12 of 2011 on Legislative Planning – the integration of national development planning with legislative planning, and the arrangement of institutions to control the substance of central and regional regulations.

Next, Yunus Husein (Head of Jentera School of Law) explains the concept and implementation of Presidential Decree no. 13 regarding the beneficial owner corporations in preventing money laundering and terrorism. Husen began by explaining the common problem in the world, which is the lack of adequate, accurate, and timely information, which facilitates acts of money laundering or terrorism by concealing the identity of suspected criminals, the true purposes of a corporation’s property, and the source of funds of said property. Currently, Indonesian law only requires the identification of the legal owner of a corporation, as opposed to the beneficial owner. Therefore, Presidential Decree Number 13 of 2018 was established to require corporations to identify their beneficial owners periodically to authorized agencies. Aside from this presidential decree, Directorate General of Public Law Administration has also launched an application-based system for corporations to report their beneficial owners. The implementation of this presidential decree is one of the top-priority programs in achieving an open-government in Indonesia.