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View all search resultsJakarta raid on foreign nationals raises questions over gambling ring financiers
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Foreign nationals, who police said were mainly from Vietnam, walk on May 10, 2026, ahead of being transported after their arrest in Jakarta. The detainees have been suspected of running an online gambling operation for two months at an office building (Reuters/Willy Kurniawan)
Q
uestions are mounting over the key figure behind the sponsorship of a Jakarta-based online gambling network, following last week’s raid that uncovered hundreds of foreigners operating across 75 domains and gambling websites from an office building in the heart of a business district in West Jakarta.
Lawmakers have urged the National Police to deepen their investigation into the network’s funding flows as investigators are scrambling to find the financiers behind the gambling ring.
“It is impossible for more than 300 foreign nationals to operate without powerful actors backing them, and there are strong indicators of local network involvement,” deputy chair of the House of Representatives Commission III overseeing law enforcement, Ahmad Sahroni, said on Monday, as quoted by Antara.
Together with the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK), the police must work to dismantle these networks down to their roots and ensure there is no impunity in holding those responsible to account, regardless of the perpetrators’ nationalities, Sahroni went on to say.
Concerns are growing that online gambling and cyber scam operations, once concentrated in mainland Southeast Asia such as Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, are relocating after crackdowns there, with recent raids pointing to an increasingly entrenched presence in Indonesia.
Last Thursday’s raid at Hayam Wuruk Plaza Tower, an office building in the crowded Hayam Wuruk business and retail district, has raised alarms that these networks are operating in plain sight among legitimate businesses, rather than in more isolated hubs seen in places like Cambodia's Sihanoukville city where such operations have typically been concentrated away from the general population.
Police arrested 321 foreigners, mainly from Vietnam, in the raid and seized phones, passports, laptops, computers and cash in multiple currencies.
