Attorney General's Office Examines 5 Witnesses from Forestry Ministry in Pulp Export Manipulation Case
The alleged transfer pricing corruption case involving PT Toba Pulp Lestari (TPL) Tbk remains under investigation. Five witnesses from the Ministry of Forestry were examined by investigators from the Attorney General’s Office today.
‘On Tuesday, 18 August 2026, the team of investigating prosecutors at the Directorate of Investigation of the Deputy Attorney General for Special Crimes carried out investigative activities in the form of examining five witnesses in connection with the alleged criminal act of corruption involving transfer pricing by PT TPL to corporate entities from 2008 to 2025,’ said Anang Supriatna, Head of the Attorney General’s Office Legal Information Centre, in a statement to journalists on Tuesday (18/8/2026).
The five witnesses examined from the Ministry of Forestry have the initials BP, TR, FY, DN, and RB. The Attorney General’s Office has not yet disclosed the positions of these witnesses within the ministry.
‘The examination of witnesses by investigators was carried out to strengthen the evidence and complete the case file in the matter in question,’ Anang concluded.
In this case, the Attorney General’s Office has named two employees of the Directorate General of Taxes at the Ministry of Finance as suspects. They are BP, who served as supervisor of tax audits of PT TPL for the 2020 and 2023 tax years, and SR, who served as supervisor for the 2024 tax year audit.
Both are suspected of deliberately ignoring audit procedures to cover up manipulation of export reports for pulp commodities carried out by the company in order to reduce its tax burden.
Saiful Bahri Siregar, Director of Investigation at the Deputy Attorney General for Special Crimes, revealed that the main modus operandi in this case is under-invoicing, or reporting selling prices far below their actual value.
PT TPL allegedly reported its export products as paper grade pulp or Bleached Hardwood Kraft Pulp, when the products actually shipped were dissolving pulp, which has a much higher selling value.
‘The facts obtained show that PT TPL, which operates in the pulp processing and forestry industry, has since 2008 carried out export sales of pulp to its affiliates by means of under-invoicing, reporting at the export stage from Indonesia as paper grade pulp or bleached hardwood kraft pulp,’ said Saiful Bahri at a press conference at the Round Building of the Attorney General’s Office, South Jakarta, on Thursday (12/8).
Saiful explained that the manipulation of the harmonised system codes was carried out systematically. As a result of this manipulation, the tax paid by PT TPL to the state was drastically reduced from what it should have been.
‘In order to reduce the value of PT TPL’s products from their actual value, PT TPL unlawfully, from the 2018-2025 period, reported sales of pulp products as products that were not actually sold to PT Asia Pacific Rayon or its affiliated companies,’ Saiful explained.
The investigation revealed that PT TPL routinely provided sums of money to the two tax officials each year. The bribes were intended to alter the tax calculation patterns so that the export price manipulation would not be detected.