Handling Of Chromebook Corruption Cases, AGO Prevents Nadiem Makarim From Going Abroad

Former Minister of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology (Mendikbudristek) Nadiem Makarim (photo: dock.)

JAKARTA - The Attorney General's Office (AGO) prevented the former Minister of Education, Culture, Research and Technology (Mendikbudristek) Nadiem Makarim from traveling abroad. This step was taken in line with the handling of the alleged corruption case in the procurement of Chrome OS or Chromebook-based laptops.

"Yes, prevention is carried out against the person concerned," said the Head of the AGO, Harli Siregar when confirmed by VOI, Friday, June 27. The validity period for the prevention of Nadiem Makarim is 6 months, starting from June 19, 2025.

Meanwhile, regarding the prevention reasons, Harli said that investigators thought it was necessary to simplify the investigation process. "The reason is to expedite the investigation process," said Harli.

The AGO has examined Nadiem Makarim on June 23. However, investigators did not rule out returning to examine it because there were still data that had not been submitted.

"If you look at the data that is still not brought, it has not been submitted, then there are still questions that need to be explored and I think this is closely related to several answers later from other parties that will continue to be confirmed to the person concerned," said Harli.

At the previous examination, Nadiem was asked 31 questions. Of the dozens of questions raised by investigators, one of them was about the technical study meeting for the procurement of laptops which took place on April 6, 2020.

"Then there are very important things investigated by investigators in relation to the meeting in May 2020. Because we know that actually the technician's study has been carried out since April," said Harli.

The deepening of the meeting was because based on the results of a Chromebook-based laptop procurement study, it was considered ineffective. However, not long after that there was a change.

"Then in the end it was changed on the moon, if I'm not mistaken in June or July. Well, before that there was a meeting on May 6, 2020 and this investigator will investigate it," said Harli.

Meanwhile, in this case, investigators investigated allegations of malicious conspiracy by various parties by directing a technical team to conduct technical studies related to the procurement of equipment assistance related to technology education in 2020.

"In order to be directed at the use of laptops based on the Chrome operating system (operative system)," said Harli.

In fact, the use of Chromebooks is not a necessity. This is because in 2019 a trial of the use of 1,000 Chromebooks by the Ministry of Education and Culture's Pustekkom was conducted and the results were ineffective.

From this experience, the technical team also recommended using specifications with the Windows operating system. However, at that time, the Ministry of Education and Culture replaced the study with a new study that recommended using Chrome system operations.

In terms of budget, Harli said the procurement spent Rp9.982 trillion. The nearly ten trillion funds consist of Rp3.582 trillion in education unit funds (DSP) and around Rp6.399 trillion from special allocation funds (DAK).