JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia’s recently dismissed head of the National Nutrition Agency was arrested on Wednesday on corruption charges related to a multi-billion-dollar free-meals program.The program delivered on a campaign promise of President Prabowo Subianto and aimed to fight malnutrition by feeding nearly 90 million children and pregnant women. But it has come under steep criticism due to high costs and cases of food poisoning among schoolchildren who ate the meals.Prabowo fired Dadan Hindayana on Tuesday and replaced him with the agency’s deputy chief. Investigators searched the agency’s offices early Wednesday.Before Indonesia’s Attorney General’s Office made Wednesday’s arrest announcement, Hindaya could be seen being led out in handcuffs, wearing a detainee red vest and a black shirt, and escorted into a green prison van.
Prosecutors also arrested two other suspects, Sony Sonjaya, the Deputy Head of the Nutrition Provision Division and Lodewyk Pusung, the Deputy Head of the Organizational Development and Institutional Relations Division. Both were fired on Tuesday.Syarief Sulaeman Nahdi, AGO’s Director of Investigation, told reporters that based on the “examination ... and two pieces of sufficient evidence,” the three were named as suspects “in the criminal investigation of corruption related to the management of the Free Nutritious Meal program at the National Nutrition Agency for the 2025–2026 period.”
