Coordinating Minister For Maritime Affairs Claims To Be Pocketed By Illegal Nickel Exporters

Illustration (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment (Menkomarves) Luhut Binsar Panjaitan admitted that he had pocketed the identity of the perpetrators of exporting nickel ore ore to China during the period January 2020 to June 2022.

Luhut said he had been contacted by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and it was known that the exports came from South Kalimantan.

"KPK has already called, I explained. Because everything is digitized, we have sequenced from China where it came from, the origin was from South Kalimantan. Who is it, we already know everything," Luhut told the media, Thursday, September 7.

Luhut continued, his party is also investigating allegations of iron material mixed with nickel.

"The question is whether this was intentional or not, we are still looking for it," he added.

To avoid this happening again, Luhut said that currently the government and the KPK and the Attorney General's Office are preparing a digitalization system for nickel.

He gave an example of coal commodities that have been digitized so that there is no opportunity for fraud.

"For coal, it is very difficult to nipu because it has digitized, now we have entered nickel with the Attorney General, with the KPK also talking about everything, we will input digitalization so that we can trace everything," concluded Luhut.

Previously, the KPK detected allegations of illegal nickel ore exports from January 2020 to June 2022. This mining product was sent from Indonesia to China.

"The alleged (illegal nickel ore export) from January 2020 to June 2022. The source of the Chinese Customs website," said Head of the KPK Region V Coordination and Supervision Task Force Dian Patria to reporters, Friday, June 23.