A judgment against a defendant with no identifiable assets is a document. The question that determines whether litigation in Indonesia is worth commencing is not whether you will win, but whether there is anything to recover and whether it will still be there when you get there.
IndoRisk conducts asset tracing and provides litigation support to companies, creditors, insolvency practitioners and counsel pursuing recovery in Indonesia.
When asset tracing is instructed
- Before commencing proceedings, to establish whether recovery is realistic
- Following a fraud, to locate the proceeds before they are dissipated
- In support of an application for conservatory attachment over a defendant’s assets
- Where a judgment or arbitral award is unsatisfied and enforcement is being considered
- In bankruptcy and suspension of debt payment proceedings, on behalf of creditors or the administrator
- In divorce and inheritance matters involving concealed Indonesian assets
- Where a guarantor’s actual financial position needs to be established rather than asserted
What we look for
Real property
Land and buildings held by the subject, their family members and controlled entities. Indonesian land records are held office by office at the National Land Agency and are not searchable nationally by owner name, which means effective work requires narrowing the geography first through corporate records, litigation, correspondence addresses and source enquiry, then verifying at the relevant land office. Title type matters as much as location: freehold, right-to-build and right-to-use carry different transferability and different enforcement consequences.
Corporate interests
Shareholdings and directorships across the corporate register, including entities registered to family members, drivers, domestic staff and former employees — a pattern common enough in Indonesia to be a standard line of enquiry rather than a suspicion.
Operating assets
Plant, equipment, vessels, vehicles and stock, verified physically where necessary. Registered vessels and aircraft carry their own records and are frequently overlooked.
Transfers and dissipation
Identification of transfers made in anticipation of proceedings — property moved into a spouse’s name, shares transferred to a newly incorporated entity, assets sold below value to a related party. Establishing the timing and consideration of such transfers is often what makes them reversible.
Offshore linkage
Where the trail leaves Indonesia, we work with counterpart firms in Singapore, Hong Kong and the relevant jurisdictions to continue it, and coordinate the evidence so that it supports a single coherent case rather than several unconnected reports.
Litigation support
Beyond tracing, we support counsel with background and financial profiling of opposing parties, verification of documents produced in proceedings, location and approach of witnesses, evidence of the opponent’s conduct in previous disputes, and factual investigation of specific issues in the pleadings. Where the matter involves international arbitration, we prepare material to a standard that will survive scrutiny by an experienced tribunal.
Realism about enforcement
We will tell you when tracing is unlikely to produce a commercial outcome. Enforcement in Indonesia is slow, execution over immovable property is procedurally demanding, and a defendant who is well advised can complicate matters considerably. Clients are better served by an accurate assessment at the outset than by an expensive investigation that confirms a recovery route which was never going to be viable.
Frequently asked questions
Can you obtain bank account information?
No. Bank secrecy in Indonesia is protected by statute and account information is obtainable only through defined legal channels — the courts, tax authorities, the financial intelligence unit or law enforcement, on proper application. Any firm offering to supply you with a target’s bank balances is describing a criminal offence. We establish financial position by lawful inference from assets, transactions, lifestyle and commercial behaviour, and we support counsel in pursuing the proper channels where they are available.
How long does asset tracing take?
An initial viability assessment is typically two weeks. Comprehensive tracing across multiple provinces and related parties usually runs four to eight weeks.
Do you work on a contingency basis?
No. We charge fixed or capped fees for defined phases, which keeps our assessment of recovery prospects independent of our own commercial interest.
Related services
Asset tracing follows naturally from fraud and internal investigations and from background investigations on the counterparty. See the Jakarta practice overview or contact us to discuss a recovery matter.