Court Witness Reveals IT Consultant Salaries at Education Ministry Reached Hundreds of Millions of Rupiah

JAKARTA — Muhammad Hasan Chabibie, former head of the Centre for Data and Information Technology (Kapusdatin) at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology, testified that IT consultants working within the ministry during Nadiem Makarim’s tenure received monthly salaries totalling hundreds of millions of rupiah, funded from the state budget.

During proceedings at the Corruption Court in Jakarta on Monday 2 February 2026, a public prosecutor questioned Hasan about the consultant salaries, highlighting the disparity between long-serving civil servants and newly hired consultants. Hasan, currently an eselon 1B official who has served as a state civil servant since 2006, stated that consultant salaries followed the prevailing market rates at the time.

The prosecutor pressed Hasan on who authorised these payments, with Hasan indicating that such approval would have come from the minister’s direction. The prosecution’s indictment lists defendant Ibrahim Arief, a former technology consultant at the ministry during Nadiem’s tenure, as receiving Rp163 million per month. However, during hearings on Tuesday 24 February 2026, Ibrahim stated that his net salary after income tax deductions amounted to approximately Rp118 million monthly.

The case alleges that former Education Minister Nadiem Makarim, along with three other defendants, caused state financial losses estimated at Rp2.1 trillion through an alleged corruption scheme centred on a Chromebook-based laptop procurement project.