In addition to the prison term, the panel of judges ordered Makarim to pay an additional IDR 809.59 billion (approx. USD $45 million) in state compensation. If he fails to pay, the penalty translates to an extra five years of prison time. Shortly after the verdict, Makarim told the media that because his liquid assets cannot cover the staggering fine, this effectively translates to a 15-year prison sentence.
The Chromebook Case
Makarim, who is also the co-founder of ride-hailing giant Gojek, was convicted of abuse of authority for implementing a nationwide school digitalization procurement scheme that violated regulatory procedures and caused massive state financial losses. As the Minister of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology, Makarim favored Google Chromebooks and specific Chrome Device Management (CDM) software for national schools.
However, prosecutors argued that this actually constituted a calculated quid pro quo in exchange for Google Asia Pacific’s massive capital investments (totaling roughly USD $787 million) into Aplikasi Karya Anak Bangsa (AKAB), the corporate entity behind Gojek that later merged into GoTo.
The Tipikor court ruled that the procurement violated basic government principles for goods and services, bypassed mandatory planning phases, and ultimately resulted in IDR 1.56 trillion (approx. USD $87 million) in direct state losses. Moreover, the majority of the panel determined that Makarim personally received IDR 809.59 billion routed from AKAB, creating an illegal conflict of interest.
The prosecution focused heavily on an alleged corporate feedback loop, arguing that the Chromebook policy created a severe conflict of interest by indirectly driving value into tech entities where Makarim held a massive financial stake. The court ultimately tied his personal liability to this policy framework, calculating the IDR 809.59 billion restitution fine based on the perceived corporate advantages generated by the school digitalization program. While Makarim and his defense team fiercely maintained that not a single rupiah of state procurement funds ever touched his personal accounts, the majority of the panel of judges ruled that the policy structure itself constituted an abuse of authority.
State prosecutors also pointed to a massive IDR 4.87 trillion (approx. USD $272 million) spike in Makarim’s personal wealth during his ministerial tenure as evidence of corruption. However, the defense fiercely contested this, demonstrating that the increase was entirely driven by the legal, open-market valuation of his GoTo shares following the tech conglomerate’s high-profile initial public offering (IPO) in 2022.
Appeals and Ethical Complaint
The legal battle has now escalated into a rare “double appeal” at the Jakarta High Court. Makarim’s legal team filed their appeal on 1 July 2026, maintaining that the court criminalized standard corporate market movements and lacked direct evidence of a crime. Conversely, the Attorney General’s Office filed its own counter-appeal on 2 July, aiming to overturn the lighter sentence and reinstate their original 18-year demand.
Simultaneously, Makarim’s team has launched an aggressive defensive front through the country’s judicial watchdog. On 6 July 2026, Makarim’s wife, Franka Franklin, alongside defense counsels Ari Yusuf Amir and Dodi S. Abdulkadir, formally filed a sweeping ethical complaint with the Judicial Commission.
The defense explicitly stated they are not legally disputing the panel’s right to issue a verdict, but are instead targeting severe professional misconduct by four of the five trial judges: Presiding Judge Purwanto S. Abdullah and member judges Eryusman, Sunoto, and Mardiantos. The fifth panelist, Judge Andi Saputra, was notably excluded from the complaint. Judge Saputra issued a dissenting opinion in the final verdict, arguing that the prosecution’s case relied entirely on assumptions and failed to establish criminal intent or a direct chain of causality.
One of the complaints is that Presiding Judge Purwanto S. Abdullah was already under a six-month suspension (issued by the Judicial Commission on 8 December 2025) for misconduct in former Trade Minister Tom Lembong’s sugar import trial. Strangely, he was appointed to head Makarim’s panel the very next day.
The Judicial Commission has officially accepted the report and evidence, promising a comprehensive review of the trial recordings. While this commission cannot overturn the 10-year prison sentence, a ruling in the defense’s favor would fundamentally damage the credibility of the initial trial, handing Makarim powerful leverage as his case heads to the High Court.
Criminalization of Policy?
The core dilemma of this Chromebook case sits at a messy intersection of ethics and administrative pragmatism. Legally and ethically, a minister should not only avoid the actual conflict of interest, but also the perception or impression of a conflict of interest (and so, a multi-billion rupiah policy that indirectly benefits a global tech giant linked to the minister’s former company is bound to raise massive red flags).
Yet, the trouble is that from a purely technocratic standpoint, Google Chromebooks were widely considered the superior choice for mass-scale education digitization due to their low hardware requirements and centralized cloud management capabilities. If a logical, resource-saving policy can be retroactively twisted into a felony simply because of a policymaker’s professional background, it signals a dangerous trend: the criminalization of public policy. It means the judiciary can effectively imprison a public official for an authorized strategic decision based on circumstantial corporate timelines, completely bypassing the fundamental legal requirement to prove criminal intent or direct personal enrichment.
