Former Garuda Indonesia (GA, Jakarta) chief executive Soekarno-Hatta was sentenced last week to eight years in prison and fined 1 billion rupiah ($61,200) after a corruption trial in Jakarta. Emirsyah Satar, Garuda’s CEO from 2005 to 2014, received the bad news at the city’s Central District Court on June 27. He was also ordered to pay restitution of $86.4 million or serve an additional four years in prison.
The Corruption Eradication Committee (KPK) has accused Satar and several other former Garuda officials of causing financial losses to the state. They said he passed on a confidential aircraft purchase plan to Soetikno Soedarjo, a business consultant who represented the interests of ATR – Avions de Transport Régional and Bombardier Aerospace. Soedarjo, who was sentenced to six years in prison last week, passed on the plan to Bombardier.
Emirsyah also unilaterally changed the capacity of the purchase plan from 70 to 90 seats without going through the board. State-owned Garuda ended up purchasing ATR72-600s (operated by its subsidiary Citilink) and CRJ1000ERs, which were not the right size for the airline’s needs. Garuda subsequently incurred losses of $609 million operating these aircraft.
This was the second time Satar had been prosecuted in Indonesian courts over his aircraft procurement practices. In 2020, in a case also brought by the KPK and also involving Soedarjo, he was sentenced to six years in prison for bribery and money laundering. In that earlier case, he was found to have received bribes from Soejarno while he was chief executive of the Mugi Rekso Abadi conglomerate, in exchange for Garuda procurement contracts. Satar was also found to have received bribes from Rolls-Royce and Airbus during the procurement process. During pretrial proceedings in the latest trial, Satar’s lawyer argued that the cases were related and that the conduct complained of had been addressed in the first trial. This argument ultimately proved unsuccessful.
