Prabowo’s Crackdown on Palm Oil Export ‘Leakages’ Hits Musim Mas, Wilmar Units, Raising Investor Questions

JAKARTA, Investortrust.id — Indonesia has named subsidiaries tied to palm oil giants Musim Mas and Wilmar as part of a widening criminal investigation into alleged export under-invoicing, marking the clearest sign yet that President Prabowo Subianto is escalating his campaign against what he calls decades of “leakages” in the country’s natural resource trade.

Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa said Tuesday that the Attorney General’s Office is investigating units linked to both groups over alleged manipulation of export invoices tied to crude palm oil, or CPO.

“Those two are correct. Both of them,” Purbaya said in Jakarta on Tuesday when asked whether subsidiaries of Musim Mas and Wilmar International were among the firms under investigation.

The probe is part of a broader investigation into 10 companies suspected of using under-invoicing and transfer pricing schemes involving affiliated trading firms in Singapore.

The crackdown strikes at the heart of Indonesia’s commodity-export model, where coal, palm oil, nickel and other resource shipments generate hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

For global investors, the case signals two competing narratives unfolding simultaneously in Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

On one side, Prabowo’s administration is attempting the most aggressive overhaul in years of commodity export governance, targeting alleged tax leakage, transfer pricing and offshore profit shifting that officials say deprived the country of massive revenues.

On the other, the public naming of major corporate groups before formal legal conclusions are reached is raising concerns among investors over regulatory certainty, due process, and the broader investment climate.

The market sensitivity is particularly acute because both Musim Mas and Wilmar are deeply embedded in global edible oils, food manufacturing and biofuel supply chains.

Purbaya alleged that exporters shipped commodities to affiliated trading companies in Singapore at artificially depressed prices before the goods were resold at significantly higher market values.

“We saw export prices from here to Singapore at only half the actual value,” he said. “There was under-invoicing, smuggling — around 50%.”

Indonesia’s Attorney General’s Office confirmed the case has already entered the formal investigation stage.

Syarief Sulaeman Nahdi, investigations director at the Attorney General’s Office special crimes unit, said investigators had been building the case for more than a month and had already questioned multiple witnesses.

The allegations form part of a much larger political narrative pushed directly by Prabowo.

Speaking before parliament last week, the president claimed Indonesia had lost as much as $900 billion, or roughly Rp 15,840 trillion, over 34 years due to under-invoicing and export manipulation across natural resource industries.

“Under-invoicing is essentially fraud,” Prabowo told lawmakers in Jakarta.

He described a system in which exporters allegedly sold commodities to offshore affiliates at artificially low prices, allowing profits to be booked overseas instead of inside Indonesia.

The administration now wants to structurally redesign how strategic commodities are exported.

The government recently established PT Danantara Sumberdaya Indonesia, or DSI, a new state-linked export management entity under sovereign wealth fund Danantara Indonesia.

Officials say the new body will integrate customs, export and ownership data from Indonesia’s trade systems to improve transparency and detect suspicious pricing patterns in real time.

Coordinating Economic Minister Airlangga Hartarto said the integrated system would include exporter identities, cargo ownership, importers and overseas counterparties.

The administration argues the move will strengthen Indonesia’s pricing power in global commodity markets while closing loopholes that enabled trade manipulation.

Yet the rollout is also creating unease in parts of the business community.

Several executives and analysts privately warn that the government’s communication strategy risks creating the impression of abrupt policy intervention in strategic sectors without sufficiently clear legal frameworks.

The concern is not necessarily over stronger enforcement itself, but over how quickly the state is moving toward centralized oversight of exports involving major global commodity players.

Indonesia has spent years trying to position itself as a stable destination for downstream investment in nickel processing, EV batteries, renewable fuels and industrial manufacturing.

Aggressive rhetoric around “fraud,” combined with sweeping investigations into major exporters, could complicate that narrative if investors begin pricing in higher regulatory unpredictability.

At the same time, supporters of the crackdown argue Indonesia has little choice but to tighten control over resource exports after decades of alleged revenue losses.

Muhammad Said Didu, a former senior official at the State-Owned Enterprises Ministry, backed the creation of DSI and said stronger state oversight could help eliminate under-invoicing, transfer pricing, smuggling and export manipulation.

“For years, export practices have caused losses to the state amounting to thousands of trillions of rupiah,” he said.

For Prabowo, the campaign fits into a broader economic nationalism agenda centered on maximizing domestic value capture from Indonesia’s vast natural resources.

Whether markets ultimately see the policy as a governance breakthrough or a new layer of regulatory risk may depend less on the rhetoric — and more on how transparently and consistently the investigations are handled in the months ahead.