After 2-Year Sentence, Blueray Cargo Boss Makes Surprising Decision on Appeal

Blueray Cargo Group owner John Field has decided to accept the ruling of the Central Jakarta Corruption Court in an import bribery case involving several officials from the Directorate General of Customs and Excise at the Ministry of Finance. With this decision, John Field will not pursue an appeal against the two-year prison sentence and a fine of Rp300 million, with a subsidiary penalty of 100 days in custody, handed down by the panel of judges.

Blueray Cargo’s legal counsel, Dinalara Butarbutar, said the decision was taken because the defence had never denied the payment of money to customs officials and understood that the act carried legal consequences. “The reason we are not appealing today is because we realise that the payments made by John Field and his colleagues from Blueray certainly have legal consequences,” Dinalara said on Saturday, 11 July 2026.

He explained that a cooperative stance had been shown since the beginning of the trial. The legal team openly acknowledged the payments, both in their defence and when delivering their opening statement in court. “From the start we were optimistic and we never denied that the payments occurred. We admitted everything. In our defence, we clearly stated that if the payment was a wrongful act, then we requested the lightest possible sentence from the panel of judges,” he said.

Despite accepting the verdict, Dinalara revealed that the defence had hoped the panel of judges would also consider the psychological condition experienced by John Field and the company at the time of the offence. He also assessed that there were elements of the charged article that, in his view, had not been fully satisfied. Nevertheless, the defence respects the panel’s decision.

“Although in our opinion there were elements of the article that were not perfectly fulfilled, which the panel of judges considered proven, we have never denied anything from the start. Our client, John Field, did give a sum of money to customs officials,” he said. According to Dinalara, one of the reasons for not pursuing an appeal is that the recipients of the money were state officials or civil servants, meaning the act indeed carries legal implications.