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Communications minister arrested on corruption charges
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Communications and Information Minister Johnny G. Plate is arrested on corruption charges on May 17. (Antara/Reno Esnir)
T
he Attorney General's Office (AGO) has named Communications and Information Minister Johnny G. Plate of the NasDem Party a suspect in a graft case related to the procurement of base transceiver stations (BTS) for a government 4G telephony project.
Johnny was arrested on Wednesday after a three-hour interrogation by investigators from the office of the assistant attorney general for extraordinary crimes (Jampidsus) in Jakarta. It was his third interrogation in three months.
AGO investigators also searched Johnny’s official residence at the Widya Chandra ministerial housing complex in South Jakarta and his office in Central Jakarta on Wednesday.
“We concluded that there was enough evidence that [Johnny] was involved in the alleged corruption related to the [procurement of BTS] for the 4G infrastructure project," Jampidsus director of investigations Kuntadi told the press on Wednesday.
The BTS procurement is headed by the Telecommunications and Information Accessibility Agency (BAKTI) under Johnny’s ministry. The project began in 2020, following his installation as minister in October 2019.
By 2023, the ministry was supposed to have erected some 8,000 4G BTS towers in the country’s least developed and outermost regions. But in the first development phase, which had a budget of Rp 10 trillion (US$672 million), the ministry only achieved half of its target of 4,200 BTS towers by 2021. The project’s major delays raised suspicions of mismanagement and graft.
The AGO said the alleged corruption caused Rp 8.1 trillion in state losses, far higher than its previous estimation of Rp 1 trillion.
