On May 20, 2019, PT Bayan Resources Tbk (BYAN) announced in its disclosure of information that the Company’s subsidiary PT Brian Anjat Sentosa had received the official copy of the verdict of the Samarinda State Administrative Court on the land dispute between the Company and the Kutai Kartanegara land office. The court has decided in favor of the Company, but the Company still cannot conduct its operation. Apart from the case, we previously reported that several of BYAN’s subsidiaries are facing legal issues.

Another year has passed since the last time we heard an update of the dispute over the ownership of shares of PT Hanson International Tbk (MYRX) between Benny Tjokrosaputro—the founder and president commissioner of MYRX and Goldman Sachs International and the dispute...

The Corruption Court of the Central Jakarta District Court had read their decision in the case of alleged corruption involving officials of the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the Indonesian National Sports Committee (KONI). On May 20, 2019, the Panel of Judges declared the bribers in the case guilty of all charges, but the punishment given for the convicts are very light compared to the crimes they committed.

Towards the end of last week, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) announced that they had named two new suspects in the case corruption in the regency of Bengkalis. One of the new suspects is the Regent of Bengkalis one Amril Mukminin (Golkar). Thus, the Regency has had to deal with cases of corruption twice in a row. The previous regent was ensnared in a case of corruption investigated by the regional police.

On May 16, 2019, the Central Jakarta District Court registered a tort lawsuit filed by Saudi Arabia-based Tire Technology Est. The lawsuit was filed against PT Multistrada Arah Sarana Tbk (MASA) and its President Director Pieter Tanuri. What makes the lawsuit interesting is that a similar lawsuit from the same Company was filed back in 2015 to a different district court and supposedly had a legally binding verdict.

The Corruption Court of the Central Jakarta District Court continues the trial of the defendants in the case of bribery that ensnared two judges of the South Jakarta District Court. The case had revealed a lot of things including that one of the defendants used the help several people to do the crime, including from his wife. The wife in question, sadly, is a prosecutor.

In January 2019, news broke that the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of the Ministry of Finance with the granting of the Reconsideration petition that the Ministry filed against the cassation verdict on water privatization in Jakarta. The decision was actually read on November 2018. Since then, we have not heard much of the dispute until recently when the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) sent a letter to the Jakarta Provincial Government and warned the government of possible corruption.

Several days ago the Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) and Transparency International Indonesia (TII) held a press conference and mentioned that the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) still had to resolve dozens of cases of corruption and time was running out. We all know that there are limits and expiry dates even on the investigation process and the process of investigation of some of the biggest cases of corruption have been going on for years without any visible result. Thanks to the press conference and announcement, the KPK finally spoke up on the current state of some of the mentioned cases.

Back in mid-2018 we reported the development of the ongoing dispute regarding shares ownership between PT Aryaputra Teguhartha, a company with links to PT Ongko Multicorpora (PT Mitra Investindo Multicorpora) and Kaharudin Ongko (Bank Umum Nasional and former defendant in the BLBI graft case), and PT Bunas Finance Indonesia Tbk (now PT BFI Finance Tbk) (BFIN). There are three lawsuits filed by Aryaputra as of then including a police report also filed by the Company. The prolonged dispute, as we all know, was brought to life in May 2018 when Aryaputra conducted various legal efforts. The Jakarta State Administrative High Court (PTTUN) had decided in favor of BFIN in response to the resistance filed by the Company, contrary to the verdict previously decided by the Jakarta State Administrative Court (PTUN) which sided with Aryaputra. Recently, BFIN announced that Aryaputra decided to file for a cassation. But we also just learned that there is actually one other case investigated by the police even before Aryaputra filed the lawsuit to the PTUN. In the case, the police apparently had named one Irsanto Ongko as suspect since 2015. Irsanto filed a pre-trial lawsuit to question the determination and his petition was granted in the second day of April 2019. Now Irsanto demanded the police to obey the court verdict.

We reported that the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) faced a new pre-trial lawsuit filed by the conglomerate Surya Darmadi, the owner of Duta Palma Group, several days before the KPK officially named him a suspect last week. This week, the pre-trial examination had started and as expected, the KPK denied every allegations Surya put forward in his petition.