Indonesian investigators on Thursday named a former education minister and co-founder of Gojek, Nadiem Makarim, a suspect in a corruption case.
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An Indonesian corruption court on Tuesday sentenced former Education Minister Nadiem Makarim, a co-founder of ride- hailing and payments giant Gojek, to 10 years in prison for corruption.
Makarim was found guilty in a case linked to the procurement of Google Chromebooks for schools under the country’s education digitalization program that ran from 2019 to 2022.
An education minister from 2019 to 2024, Makarim was also fined 1 billion rupiah ($55,870) and ordered to pay 809.6 billion rupiah in restitution. He faces an additional five-year prison term if he fails to repay the amount.
Prosecutors had demanded an 18-year prison sentence for Makarim, a 1 billion rupiah fine, and restitution of 5.6 trillion rupiah.
Indonesia’s Attorney General named Makarim a suspect in September 2025, alleging that he and other officials steered technical specifications toward Google products under the education digitalization program.
In February 2020, Makarim met representatives from Google Indonesia to discuss products from Google, including Chromebooks that could be used by the ministry and students.
“In several meetings, it was finally agreed that Google’s products, namely ChromeOS and Chrome Devices Management (CDM), would be used as a procurement project for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) equipment,” prosecutors wrote.
Prosecutors said this was despite a 2019 assessment by the previous education minister concluding that Chromebooks could not be used effectively in various parts of Indonesia, including remote regions.
They alleged that Makarim subsequently issued technical instructions containing specifications that only matched the ChromeOS system, helping ensure Chromebooks would qualify under the procurement process.
In other court statements, prosecutors said lower-specification Chromebooks should have cost about 3 million rupiah each but were procured for around 6 million rupiah per unit.
The case is among the highest-profile corruption prosecutions involving a former Indonesian minister.
— CNBC’s Syazwani Sanep contributed to this report.
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