JAKARTA — Indonesia’s largest environmental group, Walhi, has filed a formal complaint with the Attorney General’s Office, accusing 47 companies of environmental destruction and corruption.

The companies, which operate in industries like palm oil, mining and forestry, are accused of being responsible for 437 trillion rupiah ($26.5 billion) in state losses.

Based on field investigations and spatial analysis, Walhi says it has identified 18 forms of gratuities paid by the companies to officials in the 47 cases. In some of these cases, Walhi found that officials had approved the rescinding of forest status for certain areas by revising zoning plans, thereby allowing the companies to clear forests for their concessions.

In other cases, Walhi found officials had retroactively legalized illegal plantations within forest zones through an amnesty program, again giving companies legal cover to deforest without being prosecuted for their crimes.

Other alleged corruption schemes that Walhi identified include the granting of permits for concessions that clearly violated zoning plans, and officials taking bribes to ignore illegal activities.

One case cited by Walhi involves a palm oil company, PT Sawit Panen Terus, in Aceh province on the island of Sumatra. The company allegedly cleared 1,706 hectares (4,216 acres) of forest in the second half of 2023, before it had obtained an environmental permit.

Another case involves large-scale nickel mining in the eastern archipelagic province of North Maluku, which has devastated fishing grounds, polluted the environment and caused biodiversity loss, particularly affecting mangroves, seagrass and coral reefs.

“Law enforcement against corruption crimes must be immediately carried out by the Attorney General’s Office, as the initial evidence we have submitted is strong,” said Faisal Ratuela, the director of Walhi’s North Maluku chapter. “Additionally, previous mining permit corruption cases have already been exposed by Indonesia’s antigraft agency, the KPK, and North Maluku has been ranked as the most corrupt province in Indonesia.”

Walhi says these cases aren’t isolated incidents, but part of a broader, structured network of corruption involving government officials and corporations, which the group describes as cartels.

“The 47 cases we are presenting today are just samples of a much larger scheme of ongoing environmental crimes in forestry, plantations and mining,” said Walhi executive director Zenzi Suhadi.

These cartels function as coordinated networks where corporations receive favorable policies, illegal activities are ignored, and officials at multiple levels receive bribes or political benefits in return.

Zenzi said Walhi had identified 12 levels of officials, from village authorities to ministries, allegedly involved in environmental crimes. In some cases, these officials issued regulations promoting resource exploitation and granting amnesty for corporate violations, he said, describing this as state capture corruption.

With indications of widespread collusion in environmental crimes, Zenzi called on the AGO to target these so-called cartels.

“Crimes against natural resources — whether in palm oil plantations, industrial timber plantations or mining — cannot be addressed in isolation,” he said. “To dismantle them, law enforcement must target the cartels behind them.”

Zenzi said Walhi hopes the AGO will follow up on its report, noting that prosecutors have recently begun tackling crimes related to natural resources. This includes a high-profile corruption case involving illegal mining in the tin hub of the Bangka-Belitung Islands — one of the biggest corruption scandals in Indonesia’s history, with environmental damage estimated at 271 trillion rupiah ($16.6 billion).

“They [prosecutors] have begun addressing not just financial losses to the state but also broader economic damages,” Zenzi said. “This is good news for the people who have long suffered due to natural resource exploitation.”

Harli Siregar, the spokesman for the AGO, said he had received the report from Walhi and would forward it to the relevant divisions within the AGO for further action.

He noted, however, that the AGO can only prosecute corruption linked to environmental crimes, while the crimes themselves fall under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Forestry, or local law enforcement agencies.

“Other investigative bodies are responsible for environmental crimes in general,” Harli said. “If elements of corruption are found, we will take further action.”

Banner image: Aerial photograph of land being cleared for a nickel mine in North Morowali. Ten journalists hailing from places like Morowali received funding to report on the impact Indonesia’s headlong rush to insert itself into the electric vehicle supply chain was having on their communities. Image by Iqbal Lubis/The EITI via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

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