Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority’s new board of commissioners must prioritise resolving a 2.47 trillion rupiah (US$156.3 million) fraud alleged at peer-to-peer lending platform Dana Syariah Indonesia, according to Marwan Jafar, a lawmaker overseeing the financial sector.
He says the financial regulator, known by its local acronym OJK, must be directly involved in the investigation without compromise. He also called for an internal audit of OJK.
“We ask that all victim funds be returned without exception and without any reduction. The state must be present to protect them,” Marwan says in a statement on March 30.
“OJK needs to conduct an internal audit to understand how the Dana Syariah Indonesia case, under its supervision, would lead to losses of more than 2 trillion rupiah,” he adds.
Dana Syariah Indonesia was established in 2017 for companies to raise funds from retail investors for syariah-compliant projects.
The platform has more than 174,000 registered users. The fraud case affects around 11,151 lenders.
OJK began investigating last November when the lenders failed to receive compensation. The regulator said the probe found accounting fraud and misuse of investor money.
Indonesian police named Taufiq Aljufri, chief executive officer of the platform, as a suspect in February and detained him for 20 days. The case is still under investigation and no one has been charged yet.
The OJK’s new board of commissioners was sworn in on March 25. The five commissioners will serve until 2031.
