An Indonesian court convicted former education minister Nadiem Makarim, the co-founder of a multibillion-dollar tech startup, of corruption on Tuesday, sentencing him to 10 years in prison.
Judges found Nadiem guilty of graft tied to the procurement of Chromebooks for schools during the Covid-19 pandemic, resulting in around US$120 million in state losses.
Nadiem, 41, became one of the country’s youngest cabinet members in 2019 and served as education minister until 2024.
The former minister claims the Chromebook procurement had in fact saved money, and has dismissed the case against him as an “investigative error.”
“Experts and factual witnesses have stated: there was no element of state losses, no element of legal violation, no element of self-enrichment, enrichment of other people or corporations, and no mens rea or malicious intent,” Nadiem said in his defence plea this month.
Prosecutors had sought an 18-year sentence as well as a hefty fine of 5.6 trillion rupiah.
Google was not charged in the case, and the company has denied any wrongdoing.
GoTo Group, created in 2021 after a merger of Gojek and e-commerce platform Tokopedia, said Nadiem had no decision-making role since his resignation from the company in 2019.
Nadiem, whose lawyer father had served on the ethics committee of Indonesia’s anti-corruption agency, co-founded Gojek in 2010, starting out as a call centre with some 20 motorcycle drivers in Jakarta.
The name took inspiration from Jakarta’s ubiquitous motorbike taxis, known as “ojek.”
The company’s services have grown from ride-hailing to include food delivery and a digital wallet, with some 3.1 million registered drivers as of 2023.
Nadiem said he had accepted the offer from then-president Joko Widodo to serve as education minister in part to encourage Indonesian professionals to enter public service.
But he argued the case against him could cause an opposite effect.
“Young professionals fear that they will be the next victims,” he said.
As minister, Nadiem barred schools from forcing girls to wear Islamic headscarves and introduced a curriculum that emphasised greater flexibility in adjusting teaching methods.–AFP
