Jakarta. Three former officials and a consultant at Indonesia’s Education Ministry have been named suspects in a corruption case over a Chromebook procurement project that allegedly caused Rp 1.98 trillion ($122 million) in state losses, the Attorney General’s Office said Tuesday.

The suspects are Mulyatsyah, the former director for junior high schools; Sri Wahyuningsih, the former director for elementary schools; Ibrahim Arief, a technology consultant; and Jurist Tan, a former special staff member to Education Minister Nadiem Makarim who is currently overseas.

“As a result of their actions, the state suffered a loss of Rp 1.98 trillion,” Abdul Qohar, director of investigations at the AGO’s special crimes unit, told reporters in Jakarta.

The case centers on the Education Ministry’s Chromebook procurement program between 2020 and 2022, aimed at providing 1.2 million laptops for students in Indonesia’s outermost and underdeveloped regions as part of a digitalization initiative. The project had a total budget of Rp 9.3 trillion sourced from the state budget and special allocation funds.

Investigators found that the suspects conspired to issue technical guidelines requiring the use of laptops with Chrome OS, despite the operating system’s reliance on stable internet access, which remains inconsistent in many remote areas of the country.

“Teachers and students were unable to use the laptops optimally,” Qohar said, adding that the devices failed to meet the educational needs of schools in the targeted regions.

The AGO said it had examined 80 witnesses and three experts and collected evidence including laptops, mobile phones, hard drives, and documents from multiple locations connected to the case. The investigation led to the discovery of sufficient evidence to charge the four individuals under Indonesia’s anti-corruption laws.

While the AGO has not named Education Minister Nadiem Makarim as a suspect, authorities previously questioned him as a witness in the investigation. 

Last week, the AGO searched the office of tech giant GoTo Gojek Tokopedia (GOTO) in Jakarta as part of its Chromebook investigation. Nadiem co-founded Gojek before it merged with Tokopedia to form GoTo.

The AGO said it will continue efforts to locate and question Jurist Tan, the former special staff member who is currently overseas, as part of the ongoing legal process.

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