Netray Monitoring On Danantara: Netizens' Concerns Will Become A Corruption Field

A number of employees left the Anagata Nusantara Power Management Agency (BPI Danantara) building in Jakarta, Friday (7/2/2025). (ANTARA/Reno Esnir/app/YU/am)

JAKARTA - President Prabowo Subianto's decision to launch the Anagata Nusantara Power Investment Management Agency (BIP Danantara) has caused a polemic. Netizens are worried that the existence of Danantara will actually fertilize the practice of corruption in Indonesia.

Danantara is an investment management agency or sovereign wealth fund (SWF) that was formed to optimize the management of state assets at a large scale and better coordination.

The formation of the Danantara is based on the third amendment to Law Number 19 of 2003 concerning BUMN. This revision of the law was passed at the DPR Plenary Meeting on February 4, 2025, which regulates Danantara's duties and functions as an investment management agency.

The government's goal of establishing this institution is to optimize state assets and SOEs in order to provide greater and more sustainable benefits for Indonesia. Later, Danantara will manage state assets to finance strategic projects.

The formation of the Danantara immediately attracted the attention of the public and became news in almost all mass media.

Netray also monitors the issue of this new institution to see the various points of view presented. With keywords and intermediaries over the past week, February 13 to 19, 2025, 359 articles were found.

The intensity of the news has emerged since Prabowo discussed this in international forums even though the number is still small.

However, in the following days the news was increasing and the peak occurred on February 18, 2025, 78 articles emerged. On that day, the news focused on the response of various parties to the impact that occurred, both positive and negative.

To find out various discussions of the Indonesian mass media, Netray uses the Hot Issue feature. As a result, discussions about the 'budget efficiency' and budget cuts' dominate online media coverage.

This savings is in the context of volume II budget efficiency carried out by Prabowo. In fact, he targets efficiency to reach IDR 750 trillion. It turns out that this efficiency is not only for the Free Nutrition Food (MBG) program but also for Danantara. With this target, half of it will be invested in Danantara in the amount of Rp. 324.3 trillion.

However, the existence of this institution has made a number of parties speculate about the potential for corruption, as stated by Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) observer Wana Alamsyah.

According to Wana, the chances of corruption are quite large because of the clause in the BUMN Law which states that new auditors can examine Danantara after the approval from the DPR. He also suspects that the existence of these regulations makes it seem as if there is an effort to protect the Danantara so that it is not touched by law enforcement agencies and auditors.

In addition, Wana showed data from 2016 to 2021 which showed quite a lot of corruption in SOEs. Around 119 corruption cases occurred in that period with a state loss value of more than IDR 40 trillion.

Another discussion that was also widely discussed was about money' and self-sufficient bank'. This is related to the rows of state-owned banks that have joined the Danantara, including Bank Mandiri, Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), and Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI).

There was an invitation to move or withdraw money from state-owned banks because the public was worried that this institution could cause a scandal such as the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

For information, 1MDB became a mega corruption field that rocked Malaysia in 2015. Najib Razak, Prime Minister of Malaysia from 2009 to 2018, was found guilty of embezzlement of 1MDB funds into his personal account and was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2022 by the Kuala Lumpur court. He was charged with money laundering, abuse of power, and other charges.

The BUMN Law is also a dominating discussion regarding this issue. This is related to the amendment to the article on the BUMN Law No. 19 of 2003 which is considered above the law.

Especially in Article 9F which stipulates that members of the board of directors, commissioners, and supervisory board of SOEs cannot be held legally accountable for BUMN losses if they can prove that the losses are not due to their mistakes or negligence, have carried out their duties in good faith and caution, have no conflict of interest, and have taken action to prevent losses.

Netray also caught the opinion of netizens through the TikTok channel with the same keywords and periods. As a result, 150 TikTok videos were found which had been played 5.6 million times.

"From the total upload, we were able to get reactions or impressions from netizens in the amount of 202.5 thousand times," said the Netray report.

Not a few netizens have expressed their response to the Danantara. The most popular opinion as well as being the most popular upload during the monitoring period came from the @subhannursobah account, he seemed to explain how Danantara walked in a relaxed language. He also emphasized the terrible fact that the Chairman of the Expert and Initiator of the Danantara, Burhanudin Abdullah, was involved in the corruption case of Bank Indonesia's flow of funds.

Another opinion came from the @malakaproject account. Malacca Project CEO Ferry Irwandi explained some of his speculations regarding the emergence of the Danantara.

The first speculation, if Danantara manages state investment, will become a game changer for the Indonesian economy, economic growth can reach 6-7 percent.

However, if it fails, Indonesia will face major problems such as a prolonged economic crisis, a state budget that continues to deficit, a thrust issue against the government, to investors who no longer want to contribute capital and others.

For this reason, he suggested that Danantara be managed by competent people and free from political agendas.

Other netizens' opinion came from @albahri30_5. He showed his distrust in the government because this institution was not supervised by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

He questioned who would be responsible if there was misappropriation of funds by the government. Even this account also highlighted Prabowo who appointed Jokowi as a supervisor. He doubted Jokowi as a trusted person because he had been named a corrupted by the Organizational Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OOCRP) version.