Indonesia court jails ex-Garuda chief over new corruption case

An Indonesian court sentenced a former chief of state carrier Garuda Indonesia to five years in prison on Wednesday for corruption linked to procuring jets from planemaker Bombardier and turboprop maker ATR, his lawyer said.

Prosecutors had said Emirsyah Satar, who ran Garuda from 2005 to 2014, had procured Bombardier’s CRJ and ATR 72 jets without proper procedures and board approval in 2011, a court document showed.

A “lack of transparency” led to the planes’ poor performance, costing the state about US$610 million.

Judge Rianto Adam Pontoh from the Jakarta corruption court sentenced Emirsyah to jail on corruption charges and ordered him to pay a 500 million rupiah (US$30,759) fine, state news agency Antara reported.

In 2020, Emirsyah was also sentenced to eight years in prison for bribery and money laundering in buying planes and engines from Airbus and Rolls-Royce.

Monang Sagala, Emirsyah’s lawyer, confirmed the ruling to Reuters and said the legal counsel has not made a decision on whether to appeal or not.

Garuda and ATR declined to comment, while Bombardier said “in accordance with best practices when such allegations come to our attention, we launched an internal review conducted by an external counsel”.