JAKARTA — Indonesia’s largest environmental group, Walhi, has filed a formal complaint with the Attorney General’s Office, accusing 47 companies of environmental destruction and corruption. The companies, which operate in industries like palm oil, mining and forestry, are accused of being responsible for 437 trillion rupiah ($26.5 billion) in state losses. Based on field investigations and spatial analysis, Walhi says it has identified 18 forms of gratuities paid by the companies to officials in the 47 cases. In some of these cases, Walhi found that officials had approved the rescinding of forest status for certain areas by revising zoning plans, thereby allowing the companies to clear forests for their concessions. In other cases, Walhi found officials had retroactively legalized illegal plantations within forest zones through an amnesty program, again giving companies legal cover to deforest without being prosecuted for their crimes. Other alleged corruption schemes that Walhi identified include the granting of permits for concessions that clearly violated zoning plans, and officials taking bribes to ignore illegal activities. One case cited by Walhi involves a palm oil company, PT Sawit Panen Terus, in Aceh province on the island of Sumatra. The company allegedly cleared 1,706 hectares (4,216 acres) of forest in the second half of 2023, before it had obtained an environmental permit. Another case involves large-scale nickel mining in the eastern archipelagic province of North Maluku, which has devastated fishing grounds, polluted the environment and caused biodiversity loss, particularly affecting mangroves, seagrass and coral reefs. “Law enforcement against corruption…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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