Attorney General's Office Reveals Reason for Examining Forestry Ministry Employees over Pulp Export Manipulation
The Indonesian Attorney General’s Office has revealed the reason for examining a number of employees of the Ministry of Forestry in connection with an alleged transfer pricing corruption case involving PT Toba Pulp Lestari Tbk. The examination is being conducted to ascertain the legality of the matter. “When we talk about wood, where does the raw material come from? From the forest. So in this case, the AGO investigators are ascertaining whether the acquisition of the wood in question was properly licensed or illegal. If a permit exists, then there is tax. If it is illegal, then it is a criminal offence,” said the Head of the AGO Legal Information Centre, Anang Supriatna, to reporters at the AGO building in South Jakarta on Wednesday (19/8/2026).
Previously, the AGO examined five individuals, namely BP, TR, FY, DN, and RB. Today, the AGO examined four Forestry Ministry employees. “Yesterday there were five, if I am not mistaken, from Forestry, and today there are also examinations of Forestry employees, approximately four. So there have been around nine in total,” he said.
Anang stated that the AGO has no plans yet to summon the Minister of Forestry, Raja Juli Antoni. The employees examined so far are Forestry Ministry staff at echelon 3 level and below. “On average, echelon 3 and below,” said Anang.
In this case, the AGO 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 for 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 conceal manipulation of export reports for pulp commodities carried out by the company in order to reduce its tax burden.
The Director of Investigation at the AGO’s Junior Attorney General for Special Crimes, Saiful Bahri Siregar, 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 AGO’s Round Building in 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 they were not 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.