This Case Study highlights how investigators of Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry achieved their first conviction for money laundering linked to forestry offences, leveraging institutional and legal changes in financial investigation procedures.

Key points:

• In a case of illegal logging in Alas Purwo National Park, investigators of Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry obtained their first money laundering conviction.
• This achievement was made possible through a 2021 Constitutional Court decision extending the power to pursue money laundering offences to investigators in charge of predicate offences, in this case timber trafficking. This power was previously limited to investigators of traditional law enforcement agencies, including the police and the Corruption Eradication Commission.
• Training and technical assistance by the Green Corruption programme of the Basel Institute on Governance contributed to strengthening law enforcement capacities to effectively handle money laundering cases and track illicit financial flows tied to environmental crimes.
• Sustained coordination and collaboration among the Ministry, Indonesia’s Financial Intelligence Unit and the Attorney General’s Office were pivotal in applying the follow-the-money approach to the illegal logging case.
• Businessman Supono was convicted initially of illegally trading rosewood and later of laundering approximately USD 127,000 he had obtained through log trading. In both cases, he was sentenced to prison and ordered to pay a fine.
• Although the amount of money laundered in this case and the imposed fines were relatively modest, the case set a precedent for integrating financial crime investigations into environmental enforcement. This paves the way for future, larger-scale prosecutions by investigators of environmental agencies.

About this Case Study

This publication is part of the Basel Institute on Governance Case Study series, ISSN 2813-3900. It is licensed for sharing under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

The development of this publication was funded through the Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) Challenge Fund.

The contents are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Basel Institute on Governance, its donors and partners, or the University of Basel.

Suggested citation: Anindito, Lakso. 2025. “Indonesia: a landmark money laundering conviction in a forestry crime case.” Case Study 12, Basel Institute on Governance. Available at: baselgovernance.org/publications/cs-12.