The arrest of Johnny G Plate damages President Joko Widodo’s reputation in the fight against corruption.
Indonesia’s communications and information technology minister has been arrested in a corruption case linked to a telecommunications project that resulted in a loss of more than $500 million to the treasury.
Johnny G Plate was taken into custody on Wednesday after appearing for questioning at the attorney general’s office in the capital Jakarta, Kuntadi, the prosecutor’s office’s director of investigations, said.
Footage showed Plate leaving the public prosecutor’s office handcuffed and wearing a pink prisoner’s vest. He did not respond to questions from journalists.
If he is formally charged, it could further erode President Joko Widodo’s credibility when it comes to fighting corruption. Most recently, its social affairs and fisheries ministers were jailed in 2021 on corruption charges.
The project started in late 2020 to address more than 7,900 dark spots in mobile coverage in the outermost, underdeveloped and remote areas of Papua, Sulawesi, Borneo, Sumatra and East Nusatenggara in Indonesia. The ministry’s data, due this year, showed that only 4,200 sites have received the equipment so far.
The corruption case is believed to have cost the state 8 trillion rupiah ($539 million), said Muhammad Yusuf Ateh, head of development finance control at the prosecutor’s office. He said the losses included notional payments for the base stations that were not built.
“Based on today’s investigation, we have concluded that there is sufficient evidence that he [Plate] was involved in a corruption case of a base transceiver station,” said Kuntadi, AGO’s director of investigations for extraordinary crimes, who, like many Indonesians, goes by one name.
Plate was apprehended along with five other suspects, including three from the private sector, after some 60 people were questioned about the tender process.
His arrest also sparked speculation about the fate of his NasDem party, which is part of the governing coalition with seven others. NasDem had previously supported a popular opposition politician, Anies Baswedan, as a presidential candidate in 2024. Widodo called the party an “outsider” in the coalition.
Indonesia fell four points on its corruption perception index to 110 out of 180 countries last year, according to global corruption watchdog Transparency International.