JAKARTA. As the country faces increasing money laundering by state officials, the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK) has asked the government to demand banking authorities stop allowing cash transfers of more than Rp 500 million per transaction in 2015.

PPATK said that during 2014 its investigations found as many as 26 regents, 12 governors, one governor’s wife, two deputy regents, one deputy governor, two mayors and one regent’s son had total transactions of Rp 1.2 trillion in their bank accounts.

There is a high probability that some dubious transactions might have been related to money laundering.

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“Most transactions took place through in-and-out cash transfers. Cash transactions have become a favored way for officials to avoid being recorded by the financial system. They avoid online cash transactions because it could identify all the transfer information,” PPATK chairman Muhammad Yusuf said Tuesday.

In a move to obtain a legal basis for the PPATK request, Yusuf said that his office had sent a formal letter to the Law and Human Rights Ministry urging the government to establish a draft cash transfer limitation law so that the government could propose it to the House of Representatives early in 2015.

“We hope that the draft can be listed on the House’s National Legislation Program [Prolegnas] list of 2015,” Yusuf said, adding that he was restricted by the law from revealing details about the regional heads’ suspicious banking transactions.