| Swiss may help Indonesia trace stolen assets |
JAKARTA, Sept. 7 (Xinhua) -- Swiss officials have ensured Indonesia that it will not require an inter-governmental agreement to find and recover state assets stolen and kept by Indonesians in Swiss banks, local press said Friday.
Jean Bernard Schmid, an investigating magistrate in Geneva, Switzerland, said his country would offer help to any country whose assets had been stolen and deposited in a Swiss bank account, reported English daily The Jakarta Post.
"We don't need a government-to-government treaty to process the recovery of assets that are allegedly looted by a criminal," Schmid was quoted as saying.
"As long as the requesting country has secured strong evidence that the assets in the Swiss bank are crime proceeds, we can directly freeze the assets.
Schmid, who was on an official visit to Bali island Thursday, said the requesting state would not need to wait until its court ruled a person was convicted for stealing money. A request to freeze the assets could be proposed during the investigation process, he said.
Pascal Gossin, chief of the international legal assistance section with Switzerland's federal department of justice and police, said his country had enacted a regulation in 1983 giving it authority to help foreign countries find and recover stolen funds.
He said before the 1983 International Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters (IMAC) law was enacted, Switzerland faced difficulties handling assets embezzled or stolen from abroad.
"The main problem was to find a way to return such assets quickly to their rightful owner. And we had to take into account any justified claim filed in Switzerland against these funds," he said.
As a major international financial center, Switzerland has a fundamental interest in ensuring illicitly acquired assets do not find a place in its banks.
"Our government has therefore put in place a comprehensive range of legal instruments and measures for identifying, blocking and returning assets with criminal origins," Gossin said.
Gossin said over the past 20 years, Switzerland had returned 1.6 billion US dollars.
No comprehensive data is available regarding the amount of Indonesia's assets allegedly embezzled to Swiss banks.
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