Indonesia is scaling up its fight against fisheries-related crimes, going beyond boat crews to target the ultimate beneficiaries of these illegal practices.

The country’s fisheries ministry announced the move in the wake of a Constitutional Court decision in June that allows civil servants to investigate certain criminal acts.

“The civil servant investigators can now follow the trail of assets of the criminals in the fisheries and marine sector for signs of money laundering,” Adin Nurawaluddin, the ministry’s director-general of marine and fisheries resources monitoring, said in a statement.

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Indonesia’s newly minted investigators to go after illegal fishing kingpins

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