Jakarta – The Secretary General of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), Dr. Amirsyah Tambunan, expressed appreciation for the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK) announcing the existence of 10 million dormant accounts that were receiving social assistance.

“As a citizen, I appreciate the PPATK for announcing the existence of 10 million dormant accounts that are receiving social assistance. Moreover, it was mentioned that data for 571,410 social assistance recipients indicates involvement in online loans, online gambling, the narcotics business, and terrorism,” he stated.

Previously, in a press release dated July 29, 2025, the PPATK explained the temporary blocking of dormant accounts, stating that the blocking aims to protect customer rights and maintain the integrity of the national financial system.

This step was taken because over the past five years, many dormant accounts have been misused without the owners’ knowledge. These accounts are often used to hold funds from criminal acts, account trading, hacking, the use of nominees as holding accounts, narcotics transactions, corruption, and other crimes.

The MUI Secretary General further stated that efforts to prevent account misuse are crucial as a form of the state’s presence to protect and for the benefit of the people and the nation.

According to the MUI executive, signs of account misuse arise from several questions. First, why is it strongly suspected that the social assistance recipient accounts do not belong to the account holders themselves.

In this regard, there is an anomaly. Many of these accounts then become active because withdrawals are made by unauthorized or irresponsible parties.

Second, who controls these accounts? Third, why were trillions of rupiah collected from millions of these fictitious accounts during the period when social assistance was disbursed.

Based on these questions, a further question arises: who is capable of organizing and committing crimes using the modus operandi of a fictitious social assistance recipient system.

There is a structured, systematic, and massive syndicate

“To answer that question, it is necessary to investigate who prepared the accounts. It certainly is not an individual. It is strongly suspected to involve a structured, systematic, and massive syndicate with access to banking and the data input system in the relevant Ministry,” he said.

He then highlighted the need to scrutinize government officials or employees who have access to the social assistance data system through the Integrated Social Welfare Data (DTKS), as they can input fictitious data, including names, population identification numbers (NIK), and fake addresses into the system.

Then the question becomes, who are the individuals in the banking sector involved? Because this syndicate certainly requires help from individuals within banks to open fictitious accounts without legitimate owners or with fake identities on a large scale, and this is suspected to involve parties acting as ID card collectors and fund withdrawers.

Therefore, it is reasonable to suspect the existence of criminals receiving fictitious social assistance through a specific syndicate, as the number of fictitious recipients is large-scale, not tens or hundreds that could be explained as “human error” during data input.

Therefore, the MUI Secretary General fully supports the President’s request to the Head of the PPATK to thoroughly uncover and resolve the dormant account scandal. Immediately after that, the PPATK should submit a report to the Indonesian Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) for follow-up, as this is an extraordinary crime.

Another modus operandi is the discrepancy in data between the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Villages, where the Ministry of Finance mentioned the existence of 15 fictitious villages receiving village funds, and this is a loophole for syndicates wanting to misuse state budget funds.

Solutions for the benefit of the people and the nation

What then is the solution for the benefit of the people and the nation? According to the MUI executive, one solution is that the Single Socio-Economic Data launched by the President must be promptly completed to organize and prevent loopholes for syndicates misusing social assistance funds.

This integrated data from a single source can be used by all Ministries and Institutions in distributing social protection programs through the social safety net.

In this regard, two absolute requirements are necessary. First, an accountable and transparent database system. Second, the people carrying out the tasks must be proven honest, so that distribution is on target.

This step can also be used to determine policies for distributing national education costs,