Beyond Formal Legality: Economic Crime Regulation, Legal Circumvention, and the Protection of Socially Vulnerable Interests in Indonesia and Hungary

Abstract

Study Objective: This study examines how criminal law addresses legal evasion without eroding the principle of legality, and how such responses can protect the interests of vulnerable populations.

Method/Approach: This study is a legal research that uses both statute and comparative approaches.  comparing Indonesia's fragmented sectoral regime with Hungary's functional combination of anti-tax-abuse, budget-fraud, welfare-fraud, oversight-responsibility, and asset-oriented enforcement.

Novelty: This study uses vulnerability as an analytical criterion for identifying the public interests that suffer disproportionate consequences when complex economic crime diverts public resources or distorts market access.

Findings: Indonesia should not criminalize all forms of formal compliance that undermine the purpose of regulation. Such a formula w7ould be uncertain and risk turning legitimate administrative disputes into criminal cases. A more defensible approach is a two-tier model. Administrative anti-abuse measures should address both artificial arrangements and tax or regulatory evasion. Hungary offers a useful comparative lesson because its budget fraud regime consolidates several forms of fiscal fraud while maintaining identifiable behavioral elements.

Conclusion: Criminal liability only applies if a scheme includes fraudulent conduct, concealment of material facts, false documentation, fictitious transactions, deliberate avoidance of a predetermined public obligation, and demonstrable fiscal or public interest harm.