North Konawe Illegal Mining Case, Kejagung Investigates Forest Area and Location Points

The Attorney General's Office building in Jakarta (VOI)

JAKARTA - The Attorney General's Office (Kejagung) continues to investigate the alleged corruption case for mining permits in North Konawe, Southeast Sulawesi. One of the steps taken is to study documents related to the area and point of forest areas that are directly matched with data belonging to the Ministry of Forestry (Kemenhut).

Director of Investigation of the Attorney General's Office for Special Crimes (Jampidsus), Syarief Sulaeman Nahdi, said that matching the documents was important to strengthen the evidence in the investigation.

"We are studying the necessary documents. Yesterday we matched with the Ministry of Forestry is related to forest area, location points, and the mining area itself," said Syarief at the Kejagung building, Jakarta, Wednesday, January 14.

In addition, the Attorney General's Office also collaborated with the Financial and Development Supervisory Agency (BPKP) to calculate the alleged state losses arising in this case. Until now, Syarief has confirmed that no party has been named a suspect.

Syarief admitted that the investigation of this case required a lot of supporting data from the Ministry of Forestry. In the process, investigators have examined quite a few witnesses, although they have not revealed the identities of all of them.

He only confirmed that one of the witnesses who had been questioned was the former Regent of North Konawe, Aswad Sulaiman. Currently, the main focus of the investigators is to match all the data that has been collected with official data at the Ministry of Finance. "The data is diverse, ranging from area data, location, coordinate points, and others," he explained.

It is known that the Attorney General's Office is handling alleged criminal acts of corruption in granting mining permits in North Konawe, which is currently in the investigation stage and is handled by the Jampidsus Round Building Team.

For information, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) previously had investigated alleged mining corruption in North Konawe. However, the handling of the case was stopped for technical considerations.

The Head of the Attorney General's Office, Anang Supriatna, stated that the Attorney General's investigation had been underway for several months. Investigators are investigating alleged irregularities in mining permits that enter protected forest areas.

"It is suspected that there is an allocation of permits to several companies to open mines that enter protected forest areas, involving cooperation with related agencies," said Anang.

The period of alleged corruption in mining permits investigated by the Attorney General's Office covers the period from 2013 to 2025. A number of witnesses have been examined in this case.