JAKARTA. Vice President Jusuf Kalla has warned people not to take part in a tax evasion by putting their illegal assets in someone else's name. He emphasized that the person acting as the "shell" would be the one who faced the legal consequences.
“Do not put your car under your maid’s name, or your house under your driver’s name,” Kalla said during a tax amnesty promotion event at the Finance Ministry in Jakarta on Thursday.
As an example he cited the Videotron corruption case involving Riefan Avrian, the son of former cooperatives and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) minister Syarief Hasan. Riefan listed the name of his office boy, Hendra, as the president director of PT Imaji Media. After committing the corruption under the company’s name, the charge fell on Hendra.
Moreover, Kalla criticized "back-to-back" loans, where an investor kept assets abroad under a shell company and used them as loans for an Indonesian company owned by the investor. Since the inflow is regarded as a loan, the interest expense reduces the investor's tax liabilities.
“Don’t put your assets abroad and bring them back for your company by claiming them as foreign loans,” he said. (Anton Hermansyah)
