A court in Indonesia sentenced the nation’s most prominent tech tycoon on Tuesday to 10 years in prison after finding him guilty of abusing his power and causing losses to the state, in a closely watched case that has sent shock waves through the country’s elite and foreign business community.
Nadiem Makarim was a co-founder of Gojek, often described as Indonesia’s version of Uber. He was convicted over a decision he made six years ago, when he was the government’s education minister, to award a contract to purchase Google computers to use for remote learning during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Prosecutors claimed that the contract was a quid pro quo for investments Google had made in Gojek years earlier. They alleged that the contract had enriched Mr. Nadiem personally and had cost the government 1.5 trillion rupiah, or nearly $85 million, because of unverified pricing and markups.
A panel of four judges found Mr. Nadiem guilty of abusing his power, saying the elements of the government’s case against him were “proven lawfully and convincingly.” He was found not guilty of the primary charge of personal enrichment. One judge dissented from the guilty verdict, saying that Mr. Nadiem had nothing to do with the pricing decision for the procurement of Chromebooks.
Mr. Nadiem, 41, has repeatedly denied the charges, saying prosecutors could not prove he received any money. Critics of the case, including some of Indonesia’s most prominent lawyers, have said the prosecution’s argument was fundamentally flawed and rested on weak evidence.
The high-profile case has raised questions about the fairness of Indonesia’s judicial system and the country’s attractiveness as a place to do business. Investor confidence in Indonesia had already been shaken by the increasingly unpredictable economic policies of Prabowo Subianto, the Indonesian president, who introduced a plan for the government to take control of the country’s commodities exports.
The court ordered that Mr. Nadiem pay 809 billion rupiah ($45.2 million) in restitution to the government, along with a fine of one billion rupiah. Mr. Nadiem, who was on house arrest, said he would appeal.
“The absurdity of this is overwhelming,” Mr. Nadiem said in an interview after the verdict. He said hundreds of people were in tears in the courtroom after the sentence was handed down. “Something, I think, has cracked in the conscience of our country.”
In an interview in May, Mr. Nadiem said that his case was unfolding amid an “unprecedented wave” of prosecutions against technocrats who lack the backing of a political party, like himself. He said he feared being “impoverished by the state” and was worried that authorities would seize wealth he had earned before entering the government in 2019.
Mr. Prabowo, since taking office in October 2024, has launched an aggressive anti-corruption drive that critics say has been used, in part, to fund big-government expenditures. It has given rise to a scramble among Indonesia’s law enforcement agencies to demonstrate progress on the president’s crackdown.
“They had heard that a lot of people did not like me in the upper echelons of power because I was seen as arrogant,” Mr. Nadiem said in May. “I was seen as too disruptive and so they assumed that this would be an easy kill.”
Mr. Nadiem, a Harvard graduate, was long seen as the poster child for entrepreneurial success in Indonesia. After helping founding Gojek in 2010, he entered government at the invitation of the former president, Joko Widodo. Now, many Indonesians see his story as a cautionary tale — one that has alarmed educated professionals who might otherwise have considered a career in public service.
Prosecutors say Mr. Nadiem approved the Google Chromebooks order even though he knew they would not work in remote parts of Indonesia that have little or no internet access. Mr. Nadiem has said that he gave the go-ahead after his team recommended the Chromebooks because they were cheaper than other laptops.
Mr. Nadiem and his supporters say prosecutors failed to prove that Google paid him any money in connection with the program to buy the laptops. During the trial, former Google executives testified that the internet giant’s investments in Gojek were ordinary commercial transactions led by other global investors, and that the company had been investing in Gojek years before Mr. Nadiem became education minister.
In an April interview, Caesar Sengupta, a former senior Google executive who testified at the trial, warned that the case would have a “chilling effect” on other tech companies considering investments in Indonesia.
Mr. Nadiem was arrested last September. During his monthslong trial, which started in January, Gojek motorbike drivers turned up to support him, embracing Mr. Nadiem. On Tuesday, the courtroom was packed once again with drivers as well as media, celebrities, and other lawyers.
The Indonesian law on state losses is contentious. Many legal observers say it has been interpreted too broadly, improperly exposing former officials to prosecutions and paralyzing decision-making among the country’s state-owned enterprises.
“The entire legal framework has been geared toward securing a conviction,” said Todung Mulya Lubis, a prominent human rights lawyer who has been following the trial closely.
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