Losses Due To Illegal Investments And Loans Of IDR117 Trillion, OJK: They Never Stop And Place Offers In The Hearts Of The Public

JAKARTA - Chairman of the Financial Services Authority (OJK) Investment Alert Task Force (SWI) Tongam L Tobing noted that public losses due to investments, online loans, and illegal pawnshops reached Rp117 trillion from 2011 to 2020.

"If we look at the current SWI data that we have handled in the last 10 years, the community's losses have reached Rp. 117 trillion. This is a very large amount of funds that were cheated by the perpetrators who greatly harmed the community," Tongam said in a virtual discussion in Jakarta, quoted from Antara, Thursday August 5th.

Tongam detailed that the largest public loss occurred in 2011 with total lost funds reaching Rp68.6 trillion. For this reason, he ensures that efforts to take action against illegal investment actors who harm the community will continue to be carried out.

"We are talking about the illegal side, which can damage investors' confidence to invest in the capital market, so it needs to be eradicated together," he said.

He also explained that throughout 2020, the value of community losses had decreased to Rp5.9 trillion. Meanwhile, until July 2021, Tongam noted that investment entities, online loans, and illegal pawnshops still cost consumers up to IDR 2.5 trillion.

"Their offers don't stop, they always place the offer in the hearts of the people in various ways so that people who expect profits actually suffer losses," Tongam said.

Previously, in 2017, OJK handled 79 illegal investment entities. Furthermore, in 2018, OJK blocked as many as 106 illegal investment entities and 404 illegal online loans that began to grow.

Furthermore, in 2019, OJK blocked 442 illegal investments, 1,493 illegal online loans, and 68 illegal pawnshops. Meanwhile, in 2020, the number of illegal investments handled was 247 entities, plus 1,026 illegal online loan entities, and 75 illegal pawns.

Finally, throughout 2021, OJK has again blocked 79 illegal investments, 442 illegal online loans, and 17 illegal pawns that harm the public.

"We see that until now we are still having problems eradicating illegal investments, because if we block and announce to the public, they can easily create new names, offer them again through various means," Tongam said.

With these developments, he promised the SWI Task Force will always try to find illegal investments early on before any of our people are trapped there.