Former Minister Nadiem Makarim Challenges Chromebook Corruption Charges

JAKARTA, Investortrust.id — Nadiem Makarim, cofounder of ride-hailing giant Gojek and former McKinsey consultant who later served as Indonesia’s Minister of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology, has filed a pretrial motion at the South Jakarta District Court on Tuesday, Sept 23, 2025, to challenge his designation as a suspect in a multibillion-rupiah corruption case.

Nadiem is contesting the Attorney General’s Office decision naming him a suspect in the procurement of Chromebook laptops for the education ministry during the 2019–2022 period. He is also disputing the legality of his detention.

"Today we filed a pretrial motion on behalf of Mr. Nadiem Makarim. The challenged objects are both the suspect designation and the detention order," said his lawyer Hana Pertiwi, as quoted by Antara.

Hana argued that the Attorney General’s Office lacked sufficient preliminary evidence, particularly an official state loss audit, to justify naming her client a suspect. She emphasized that such audits should be conducted by the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) or the Financial and Development Supervisory Agency (BPKP). "If the suspect designation is unlawful, then the detention order is automatically unlawful as well," she added.

The Attorney General’s Office alleged that in 2020, during his ministerial tenure, Nadiem met with representatives of Google Indonesia to discuss education products, including Google for Education programs using Chromebook laptops. According to investigators, several closed-door meetings led to agreements that locked specifications to Chrome OS and Chrome Device Management (CDM), even before the formal procurement process began.

Nurcahyo Jungkung Madyo, Director of Investigations at the Special Crimes Division, said that unlike his predecessor Muhadjir Effendy, who declined to advance Chromebook procurement after a failed 2019 pilot in remote schools, Nadiem authorized steps that effectively guaranteed the use of Chromebooks. His orders were followed by subordinates, including Sri Wahyuningsih, then director of early childhood education, and Mulyatsyah, then director of junior secondary education, who drafted technical guidelines embedding Chrome OS specifications.

In February 2021, Nadiem issued Ministerial Regulation No. 5/2021 on operational guidelines for education infrastructure spending, which investigators say explicitly locked in Chrome OS in its annex. The alleged result was inflated procurement that caused an estimated Rp 1.98 trillion ($120 million) in potential state losses, currently being calculated by BPKP.

The case marks a dramatic turn for Nadiem, once a celebrated tech entrepreneur who rose to national prominence after cofounding Gojek in 2010, a company that later merged with Tokopedia to form GoTo, one of Indonesia’s largest technology groups. His transition from the private sector — including earlier work as a consultant at McKinsey & Company — to government was hailed as a sign of President Joko Widodo’s push to inject innovation into policymaking.