JAKARTA: The Jakarta Corruption Court found two former senior officials at the then-communications and information ministry guilty in a corruption case related to procurements in the temporary national data centre (PDNS) project.
Former director-general of informatics applications Semuel Abrijani Pangerapan was sentenced to six years in prison, while former informatics application services director Bambang Dwi Anggono got nine years of imprisonment, as reported by Kompas.id.
Aside from the prison terms, the court also fined Semuel and Bambang Rp 500 million (S$37,655) each, or an additional 140 days in jail.
The bench also ordered Semuel and Bambang to pay Rp 6.5 billion and Rp 1.5 billion in restitution, respectively.
The verdict, read out by a panel of judges presided by Judge Lucy Ermawati on Tuesday (March 10), was lighter than the prosecutor’s demand of seven years for Bambang and 10 years for Semuel.
Other defendants in this case were former communications and information ministry employee Nova Zanda, who acted as a procurement officer in the project, former tech company PT Aplikanusa Lintasarta general manager Alfie Asman and former PT Docotel Tekonologi account manager Pini Panggar Agusti.
Nova received a five-year imprisonment, while judges handed six-year prison sentences to Alfie and Pini.
The judges also confirmed an estimated state loss incurred by the corruption case amounting to Rp 140.8 billion.
“[The number] was according to an audit report by the Development Finance Comptroller (BPKP),” said Judge Daru Swastika Rini during the March 10 hearing, as quoted by Antara.
All defendants and the prosecutors told the courtroom they would think before deciding whether to appeal the verdict.
The Central Jakarta Prosecutor’s Office launched the investigation in March 2025, several months after a ransomware attack against the temporary data centres.
In June 2024, the sites, used to store data from more than 400 government agencies, were subject to a cyberattack using Brain Cipher, an update of the LockBit 3.0 ransomware, resulting in the disruption of public services such as immigration.
The attack prompted prosecutors to look further into the facilities and their procurement process.
In their verdict, judges found that the tender process for the project, which took place between 2020 and 2024, was rigged to benefit Lintasarta, a subsidiary of publicly listed telecom giant Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (IOH) group.
The officials removed some requirements from the tender in order for Lintasarta to win, which did not fulfill the international safety standard as initially required.
Collusion between Semuel, Bambang and Nova allowed Lintasarta to win multiple contracts for the temporary data centres from 2020 to 2022, from which the company illicitly enriched around Rp 140.8 billion.
The judges also found that Lintasarta had to pay some kickbacks for Semuel and Bambang after the officials threatened in 2020 that the firm would lose the data centre contract in 2021, despite the company having invested Rp 40 billion worth of hardware and software for the projects.
“If Lintasarta wanted to win the project for 2021, defendant Alfie Asman had to give Rp 3 billion for Bambang... and Semuel,” the judge read the verdict.
With a price tag of around Rp 958 billion, the PDSN were installed in 2020 to serve as temporary facilities while the government constructed a permanent one in Bekasi, West Java.
The temporary facilities were developed by former communications minister Johnny G. Plate, who was convicted in 2023 in a corruption case pertaining to inflated procurement contracts for a government 4G telephony project. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
