Three Google Executives to Testify in Mitigation for Nadiem, Prosecutors Object

The defence team of former Minister of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology Nadiem Makarim presented three Google executives as mitigating witnesses in the alleged corruption case regarding the procurement of Chromebook-based laptops.

The three witnesses are Scott Beaumont, President of Google Asia Pacific; Caesar Sengupta, former Vice President of Google; and William Florence, Head of the Developer Training Division.

“We will present three witnesses. These witnesses are all from Google, who worked at Google during the time and place of the indictment. The first witness is Scott Beaumont, who is the President of Google Asia Pacific mentioned in the indictment for a meeting in February. Then there is William Florence and Caesar Sengupta,” stated Nadiem’s legal advisor, Radhie Noviadi Yusuf, during the trial at the Jakarta Corruption Court on Monday (20/4/2026).

They were presented as witnesses via the Zoom Meeting application. Regarding this submission, the Public Prosecutors (JPU) raised objections.

One reason is the need to coordinate first with the Singapore Prosecutor’s Attaché.

“In principle, we reject the testimony of these witnesses before there is an official statement from Singapore or from the prosecution, our attaché in Singapore,” said JPU Team Leader Roy Riady.

“The Singapore Attaché mentioned that the Singapore Attorney General’s side stated that this trial process must be supervised by them in that manner,” Roy added.

The JPU stated that to prevent this trial process from disrupting relations between the two countries, they requested that the Singapore process be allowed to monitor the witness examination.

“We also remind that this trial process remains supervised as requested by Singapore for supervision in the trial process like that. And this relates to the consequences of reciprocal relations later between Indonesia and Singapore,” Roy said again.

The panel of judges held a deliberation for about 30 minutes to determine their stance.

The panel of judges decided to continue the witness examination process without reducing the opportunity (for the JPU) to raise objections.

Scott’s name was mentioned in the indictment.

Meanwhile, Caesar and William were not mentioned in the indictment.

However, both were mentioned during the trial.