Legal
Nadiem Makarim vows to appeal sentence given he was found not to have profited from $600 million laptops-for-schools program
An Indonesian corruption court has sentenced the nation’s former education minister Nadiem Makarim, who is also a hero of the nation’s tech startup scene, to ten years in jail for his role in buying a stack of Chromebooks.Nadiem is a co-founder of Gojek, a so-called superapp that offers ride share, food delivery, digital payments, and even logistics services. In 2021, Gojek merged with its rival Tokopedia. The combined entity became a ubiquitous part of daily life in Indonesia and other southeast Asian nations.In 2019, Gojek’s success and prominence saw then-Indonesian-president Joko Widodo ask Nadiem to become Education Minister, with a remit to improve the nation’s schools. Nadiem took the job but kept a minority stake in Gojek during his time in government.
During his time as minister, Nadiem oversaw a $600 million program to acquire laptops for use in schools. Departmental officials compared Chromebooks to Windows laptops and found the latter performed better, because Google’s machines need constant internet access which isn’t available in much of the sprawling Indonesian archipelago.
