Authorities from Indonesia have dramatically intensified their crackdown on illegal online gambling, ordering the closure of tens of thousands of bank accounts and suspending welfare payments for approximately 300,000 beneficiaries found to have used public funds for betting.
This multi-agency crackdown in Indonesia on online gambling signals a major effort to sever the financial lifelines of the country’s vast underground gambling networks.
The Financial Services Authority (OJK) has been at the forefront of the financial enforcement, ordering the closure of 27,395 bank accounts suspected of being linked to unlawful betting activities in the last month alone.
This is part of a coordinated strategy to trace and disrupt the small, often hard-to-track digital transactions that sustain these illegal operations.
However, the human and social cost of the problem has also come into sharp focus.
The Ministry of Social Affairs confirmed the suspension of welfare payments after investigations revealed the scale of the issue.
According to the ministry, out of nine million identified online gambling users in the country, more than 600,000 were recipients of state welfare.
Further analysis by the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK) traced approximately Rp542.5 billion (US$32.77 million) in public funds that had been channeled into online gambling by over 132,000 welfare beneficiaries.
In response, the government has begun a re-verification process to identify legitimate welfare recipients and determine penalties, which could range from formal warnings to permanent removal from state benefit schemes.
The OJK, PPATK, and Social Affairs Ministry are now working jointly to strengthen oversight by sharing data to flag high-risk transactions in real time, treating illegal gambling as both a financial crime and a serious social threat.
