Attorney General's office raids Ombudsman building in connection with cooking oil case

Jakarta — Indonesia’s Attorney General’s office has conducted raids on the Ombudsman’s headquarters and the residence of an Ombudsman commissioner as part of an investigation into alleged obstruction of judicial proceedings and prosecution in a cooking oil case involving three corporations.

The raids were conducted by investigators from the Special Crimes Division of the Attorney General’s office (Jampidsus). Anang Supriatna, head of the Attorney General’s legal information centre, confirmed the operation in Jakarta on Monday.

In addition to the Ombudsman building, investigators also searched the home of an Ombudsman commissioner, though the spokesperson declined to disclose the commissioner’s identity.

The case involves convicted defendant Marcella Santoso and three corporations: Wilmar Group, Permata Hijau Group, and Musim Mas Group. The investigation also concerns a civil lawsuit filed by these three corporations with the administrative law court (PTUN), with the Ombudsman suspected of issuing recommendations to strengthen the companies’ case.

Marcella Santoso was convicted of offering bribes to influence a court decision acquitting defendants in a corruption case involving the provision of crude palm oil (CPO) export facilities, as well as money laundering offences in 2025. She was found guilty of paying bribes totalling USD 4 million (approximately Rp 60 billion) to judges handling the CPO case and conducting money laundering transactions valued at USD 2 million in connection with the same matter, both carried out jointly with lawyer Ariyanto.

In the bribery case, Santoso and Ariyanto, together with Wahyu Gunawan, a junior registrar of civil cases at the North Jakarta District Court, served as intermediaries for the Wilmar team in delivering bribes to Muhammad Arif Nuryanta, then Deputy Head of the Central Jakarta District Court. Nuryanta subsequently distributed the bribes to three judges serving on the panel hearing the CPO case — Djuyamto, Agam Syarif Baharuddin, and Ali Muhtarom — with the objective of securing acquittals for the three corporations.