On June 30, Nadiem Makarim, a prominent Indonesian tech entrepreneur, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on corruption charges stemming from his time as Indonesia’s education minister.
Makarim’s case is the highest profile in a string of investigations under President Prabowo Subianto, who made tackling corruption a centerpiece of his populist election campaign and his presidency since 2024. He pledged to recover stolen assets, strengthen law enforcement, and take down those he deems to be part of the corrupt elite, regardless of status or political standing.
Other high-profile investigations during Prabowo’s term have involved politically connected businessmen, state-owned enterprises, and former ministers. In July, Indonesia’s top anti-corruption prosecutor Febrie Adriansyah resigned from his role in the attorney general’s office after police raids uncovered a stash of gold bars and almost $20 million in cash in a residence that he owns. Adriansyah is now facing allegations of corruption and money laundering connected to several state-owned enterprise cases. (He has denied any wrongdoing.)
Prabowo’s supporters argue that these investigations demonstrate a willingness to pursue corruption at the highest levels, even when it implicates popular public figures such as Makarim. Critics say they instead reflect selective enforcement and political maneuvering, rather than genuine institutional reform.
While many investigations may be entirely legitimate, a closer look at who is being targeted, the institutional rivalries behind certain cases, and the government’s limited appetite for deeper reform raises questions about whether Indonesia is building a stronger anti-corruption system or simply reshuffling power among the country’s political and economic elite.
Despitebroad public support for Prabowo’s anti-corruption crackdowns, the sentencing of Makarim, a symbol of the country’s tech sector ambitions, is attracting an unusually strong backlash at a time when Indonesia is facing economic headwinds, flagging foreign investment, and a slumping currency.
In 2010, before entering politics, Ivy League-educated Makarim founded the ride-hailing platform Gojek, which he transformed into a “super app” offering food delivery, digital payments, and other online services. After merging with e-commerce giant Tokopedia in 2021 to form GoTo, the business became Indonesia’s first “unicorn”—a privately held company valued at more than $1 billion—and later its first “decacorn” ($10 billion value).
In 2019, Makarim accepted a position under former President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo as education minister. Makarim left office when Prabowo assumed the presidency in October 2024.
In May 2025, the attorney general’s office opened an investigation relating to allegations that Makarim caused state losses of roughly $120 million through the purchase of around 1 million Google Chromebook laptops for schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prosecutors argue that he gave preferential treatment to Google, which had invested in the early stages of Gojek, and that he did so despite advice that the laptops would not work in remote areas with poor internet.
He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay $45 million in restitution or face an extra five years. Makarim has denied wrongdoing, arguing that the procurement was intended to rapidly expand digital learning during an unprecedented public health emergency and that prosecutors could not prove that he received any money. His legal team has filed an appeal, with the hearing set for Aug. 5.
Critics have since questioned the legal basis of the prosecution and warn that it risks criminalizing government policy decisions. Civil society organizations fear that it reflects an ongoing politicization and weakening of Indonesia’s anti-corruption institutions. This year, Indonesia’s standing on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index slipped 10 spots to 109th place out of a total of 182 countries.
According to Danang Widoyoko, the secretary-general of Transparency International Indonesia, anti-corruption in the country has become less about preventing corruption than demonstrating the state’s ability to confiscate assets. Indonesia’s slowing economy has increased pressure on the government to find new revenue sources while Prabowo’s populist approach has built political support around confronting elites and reclaiming wealth allegedly stolen from ordinary Indonesians.
A deeper problem lies in Indonesia’s legal framework, according to Tim Lindsey, a leading scholar of Indonesian law at the University of Melbourne. He argued that the Makarim case demonstrates how Indonesia’s anti-corruption legislation behaves as “asal karet” (rubber laws) capable of stretching to fit almost any circumstance. “The definition of corruption is so sloppy,” Lindsey said. “It could be applied to almost any situation where any form of loss can be contrived.”
Unlike in many jurisdictions, Indonesian prosecutors do not necessarily need to prove that a public official personally benefited or even broke a specific law to charge them with corruption. Instead, much of the legal argument revolves around demonstrating a “state loss,”—the idea that one’s actions have caused a loss to the state’s finances or economy, a concept that Lindsey argued has been steadily expanded in its application since the country’s main corruption law was passed in 1999.
The roots of today’s anti-corruption landscape date back to Jokowi’s 2019 revision of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) law, which dramatically reduced the independence of what had previously been Indonesia’s most respected anti-corruption institution, according to Marcus Mietzner, a political scientist at the Australian National University.
Although Jokowi claimed that the reforms would strengthen oversight, critics say they fractured the country’s anti-corruption architecture, leaving investigations divided between the KPK, the police, and the attorney general’s office.
Years on, the result has been chaotic. When the attorney general’s office took over the investigation into Adriansyah, its former anti-corruption prosecutor, it fueled public speculation of a cover-up. The case against Makarim—also handled by the attorney general’s office—likewise emerged as a result of this “turf war” over which agency was responsible for big corruption cases, Mietzner said.
In effect, Prabowo’s anti-corruption promises are continuing trends that began under Jokowi. “The fight against corruption in Indonesia remains a political tool, used by leaders to remove those they dislike or no longer need and place allies into the emerging vacuum,” Mietzner said. “What Prabowo has launched is not a new fight against corruption, but a well-known pattern in which a new powerholder tries to replace old patronage networks with new ones.”
Nicky Fahrizal, a researcher at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, said that the recent controversy surrounding the attorney general’s office highlights the “sharp friction” between competing agencies following the weakening of the KPK and could “severely damage” the public’s trust in the legal system.
That trust is already in jeopardy over Makarim’s case. Younger generations are frustrated that economic opportunities in Indonesia are increasingly constrained, contributing to what Leigh McKiernon of Indonesia business advisory StratEx called a “talent flight” of skilled young people and wealthy citizens who are moving their capital abroad. One viral slogan on social media—“kabur aja dulu,” or “just leave”—originated during student protests earlier in Prabowo’s term but reignited on social media during and after Makarim’s trial.
“If you truly care about Indonesia and the Indonesian people,” Indah Gunawan, a popular young political commentator, said in one her many viral social media posts about corruption prosecutions, “strengthen yourself somewhere else safer first and then choose how to contribute from a position where the system can’t chew you up and spit you out.”
The real test for Prabowo’s anti-corruption initiatives will not be the sheer number of prosecutions but whether opportunities for corruption are reduced, Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) acting coordinator Almas Sjafrina told Foreign Policy.
Take Prabowo’s two flagship programs: Free Nutritious Meals, a $10.5 billion program to provide daily meals to around 80 million schoolchildren, pregnant women, and new mothers; and his Red and White Village Cooperatives initiative, which seeks to establish 80,000 state-backed cooperatives to distribute food, fertilizer, credit, and other essential goods across rural Indonesia.
From the start, organizations such as ICW raised concerns about the potential for corruption in these programs resulting from poor planning, weak safeguards, and major conflicts of interest. The attorney general’s office is currently investigating the free meals program for allegations of corruption.
Laode Muhammad Syarif, the former deputy chairman of the KPK from 2015 until 2019, likewise argued that the administration has focused on headline-grabbing prosecutions while neglecting structural reforms. He pointed to parliament’s failure to pass a law that would expand Indonesia’s ability to confiscate illicit assets—including in some cases without a criminal conviction—and bring the country closer to international anti-corruption standards. Despite the government’s overwhelming parliamentary majority, the bill has languished for more than a decade amid concerns over due process and what critics say is resistance from political elites.
The Prabowo administration rejects suggestions that its anti-corruption campaign is politically motivated. A spokesperson for the Government Communications Agency told Foreign Policy that eradicating corruption remained one of the president’s highest priorities.
The spokesperson highlighted the Forest Area Order Task Force, a multiagency approach to tackling illegal plantations and mining operations; efforts to strengthen oversight of commodity exports, such as minerals and palm oil; and increased salaries and benefits for judges, which the government says are intended to reduce incentives for bribery and strengthen judicial independence.
The government claims that strengthened law enforcement and oversight have averted an estimated $20 billion in potential state losses from corruption and other financial crimes, alongside $1.6 billion in assets recovered through cooperation between the attorney general’s office, the KPK, and the National Police.
While critics have questioned the independence of anti-corruption institutions, the government maintains that the president has given law enforcement agencies “full space” to investigate anyone regardless of rank or political affiliation.
Makarim now sits at the heart of this debate. Whatever the outcome of his appeal, the case has already become a test of how Indonesians—and foreign investors—view Prabowo’s anti-corruption drive: as proof that no one is above the law, or that anti-corruption remains an arena for political power.
Should the courts reject Makarim’s appeal, the battle may shift to the court of public opinion and politics. Last year, Prabowo pardoned two high-profile opposition political figures convicted of corruption: Thomas Lembong, Jokowi’s former trade minister, and Hasto Kristiyanto, the former secretary-general of the largest party in the House of Representatives. The pardons were widely seen as politically motivated to build unity behind Prabowo’s government.
Makarim’s sentence is comparatively much longer, and as a relative outsider, he lacks their political connections. Yet with a dramatic decline in his popularity and growing concerns about his economic policies, Prabowo will be acutely aware of the public support for Makarim.
Granting clemency to Makarim might ease the political pressure, but it could also reinforce the very perception that the administration has sought to avoid—that in Indonesia, the final arbiter of justice remains political rather than judicial.