February 11, 2026 | 09:36 am
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Attorney General's Office (AGO) has discovered alleged 'kickbacks' or payments to several Customs and Excise officials in a corruption case involving irregularities in crude palm oil (CPO) and palm oil mill effluent (POME) exports from 2022 to 2024. Syarief Sulaeman Nahdi, Director of Investigation at the Attorney General's Office for Special Crimes (Jampidsus), stated that the perpetrators paid kickbacks to certain state officials to expedite the export administration and supervision process.
"There were kickbacks to certain state officials to expedite the export administration and supervision process, allowing classifications that did not comply with regulations to continue to be used without correction," Syarief said at the Attorney General's Office's Special Crimes Building on Tuesday, February 10, 2026.
Syarief did not specify the number of kickbacks. "That is the subject of the investigation," he said.
The Attorney General's Office has named 11 suspects in this case. Three of them are state officials: Fadjar Donny Thahjadi, former Technical Director of Customs at the Directorate General of Customs and Excise (DJBC); Lila Harsyah Bakhtiar, Head of the Non-Food Plantation Products Industry Sub-Directorate and Policy Analyst and Associate Expert Industry Supervisor at the Directorate of Forest Products Industry, Ministry of Industry of the Republic of Indonesia; and Muhammad Zulfikar, Head of the Extension and Information Services Section at the Pekanbaru Customs and Excise Office (KPBC). The rest are from the private sector.
Previously, the Attorney General's Office searched several locations, including several money changers in shopping centers in Jakarta. A law enforcement official familiar with the searches said several Customs officials were exchanging money at the money changers. "The money came from the proceeds of crime by several companies," said the source.
The Attorney General's Office found indications of this practice through electronic evidence review. Several Customs officials allegedly exchanged money directly without using intermediaries. In this exchange, they did not use their identity cards (KTP). "They have colluded with the money changer," said the law enforcer.
Read: AGO: CPO Export Graft Causes Up to Rp14 Trillion in Losses
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