AGO Seizes Phones and Laptops After Searching Six Locations in Free Nutritious Meal Case

The Attorney General’s Office has completed searches at six locations connected to the alleged corruption scandal surrounding the management of the Free Nutritious Meal programme. Director of Investigation for the Junior Attorney General for Special Crimes, Syarief Sulaeman Nahdi, stated that his team had seized a number of pieces of documentary and electronic evidence during the raids. “The results include seized documents and electronic evidence, such as mobile phones and laptops,” he told reporters on Thursday. However, he did not disclose the specific details of the six locations involved, saying only that all the evidence is currently being analysed for the purposes of the investigation. “It is still under further investigation,” he stated. The Attorney General’s Office has named former Head of the National Nutrition Agency Dadan Hindayana, along with former Deputy Heads Sony Sonjaya and Lodewyk Pusung, as suspects in the corruption case. In this case, investigators explained that the Free Nutritious Meal programme was supposed to be managed by foundations affiliated with recipient schools. However, in practice, many service fulfilment units were appointed because they had affiliations with top officials of the agency. Syarief stated that the foundations essentially did not meet the requirements to become partners. The three suspects are also accused of marking up the procurement prices of goods, resulting in losses that did not support the operational execution of the programme. The inflated items included 21,801 electric motorbikes valued at IDR 1.03 trillion, 32,000 pairs of shoes, 31,994 tablet units, and 5,400 75-inch televisions.