TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsWho gets what and how in AGO’s graft takeover
The PLN scandal was not an isolated event, but rather the tip of an iceberg of systematic kickbacks and case-brokering spanning the country's largest financial scandals.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Assistant Attorney General for Special Crimes (Jampidsus) Febrie Adriansyah walks out of the Attorney General's Office (AGO) special crimes division building in south Jakarta on July 10 ahead of a press briefing. (Antara/Asprilla Dwi Adha)
F
rom mothers forced to discard rotten breast milk from useless refrigerators to families staring at broken appliances, hospitals scrambling to keep patients alive mid-surgery and small business owners watching their daily income vanish in the dark, the Indonesian public is bearing the brunt of state-owned electricity company PLN’s coal procurement scandal.
This massive case of state mismanagement and corporate graft serves as the ultimate indictment of a broken system. Yet, while millions of ordinary people suffer, the elites responsible quietly secure their fortunes. This structural impunity was laid bare when President Prabowo Subianto permitted the extraordinary crimes of former junior attorney general for special crimes Febrie Adriansyah to be handed over to the Attorney General’s Office (AGO), his former home institution.
Febrie stands accused of protecting the corrupt energy cartels behind the blackouts in exchange for astronomical wealth, a pattern investigators suspect may have been repeated across his entire career. As the top prosecutor overseeing a staggering Rp 300 trillion (US$16.68 billion) illegal tin mining case in PT Timah, the multi-trillion-rupiah PT Asabri and PT Jiwasraya insurance collapses and the Bakti Kominfo BTS tower project, Febrie held absolute power over Indonesia’s most lucrative mega-corruption trials.
The staggering discovery of Rp 543 billion (US$30.25 million) in cash and 74 kilograms of gold bars hidden in his possession raises a chilling, open possibility: that the PLN scandal was not an isolated event, but rather the tip of an iceberg of systematic kickbacks and case-brokering spanning the country's largest financial scandals.
By transferring this case back to the AGO, the state has engaged in a masterclass in elite damage control.
The PLN coal procurement scandal is a tragic testament to how corporate graft directly assaults public welfare. For years, corrupt cartels executed a systematic "coal swap scheme." Tasked with providing high-grade fuel to stabilize the country's steam power plants (PLTU), private miners instead delivered cheap, low-calorie dirt while billing the state for premium product.
The consequences were catastrophic. When a localized transmission line flickered in Jambi, the coal-depleted power stations failed to maintain system frequencies, triggering a domino-effect blackout that plunged 13 million citizens across Sumatra into prolonged darkness. Worse still, as PLN scrambled its finite resources to stabilize the Sumatran grid, it was forced to implement rolling blackouts across other regions of Indonesia, disrupting the lives of millions of others.
