ommunications and Information Minister Budi Arie Setiadi has alleged indications of money laundering in some online gambling activities traced by the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK) in the first quarter.
“It is not just online gambling, because there are several cases [of money laundering] where they got the [illicit] money from winning in gambling,” Budi told a meeting on Monday with House of Representatives Commission I overseeing communications and information, defense, intelligence and foreign affairs.
The minister refrained from divulging any details about the cases he mentioned.
Earlier, Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Hadi Tjahjanto revealed that PPATK’s findings that online gambling activities that took place in the January-March period reached a combined transactional value of Rp 100 trillion (US$ 6.1 billion), around one-third of the full-year transactional value of online gambling activities totaling Rp 327 trillion in 2023.
Speaking at Monday’s meeting, Commission I member Nurul Arifin of the Golkar Party faction noted the staggering amount of economic losses due to online gambling and questioned the efforts taken by the communications ministry to eradicate the illegal activity.
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