Medan, Indonesia – Indonesia’s humanitarian law is under serious threat after the head of an Islamic charity organization was found guilty of embezzling $7.8m from a fund that Boeing set up for victims of the 2018 Lion Air crash.
Ahyudin, chairman of the charity Aksi Cepat Tanggap (ACT), was sentenced to three and a half years in prison on Tuesday. Prosecutors had asked for four years in prison for Ahyudin, who like most Indonesians goes by one name.
Ahyudin admitted in an interview with the media shortly after his arrest that the charity regularly took a cut of more than 13 percent, instead of the 10 percent prescribed by Indonesian law. He said he received a monthly salary of more than $16,000 and admitted to frequent borrowing from the ACT to pay for property, cars and furniture.
Former ACT president Ibnu Khajar was sentenced to three years in prison, while former vice president Hariyana Hermain received three and a half years.
The verdicts led to disagreements between victims and lawyers.
Agung Sedayu, a reporter for Indonesia’s independent Tempo, who broke the story of the ACT kidnapping following complaints from victims, said he believed the punishments would not go far enough.
“From the beginning, there were indications that Ahyudin would receive a reduced sentence,” Sedayu told Al Jazeera.
“There were many errors in the law. Not all the fraud cases that the ACT allegedly allowed were accepted in court and serious money laundering cases were not prosecuted by the prosecution.
After Lion Air flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 crashed in October 2018 and March 2019, respectively, killing 346 people in total, Boeing established a fund as part of the settlement with the families of the victims.
The Boeing 737 Max’s flight control systems, known as MCAS, were found to have malfunctioned in both crashes.
The fund, which Boeing described as a way to “empower bereaved families to support charities in the affected areas”, was $50m, $9.2m of which was given to ACT for social work in Indonesia.
The misuse of ACT came to light after recipients of the fund began to suspect the charity of mishandling the funds.
Neuis Marfuah, whose 23-year-old daughter Vivian Hasna Afifa died in the Lion Air crash, said she trusted a charity to build a school in her daughter’s name.
But when Marfuah went to the site of the school, he found that the construction work was poor and cheap.
“I hope this decision will be a deterrent and will show that we all have to be responsible for our actions, not only in this life but also in the next,” Marfuah told Al Jazeera, adding that he hoped the threat would work. as a learning experience for those involved.
Bambang, a former ACT employee who asked not to be identified, said he was not surprised by the sentences handed down to those arrested.
“I think it was appropriate and unusual,” he told Al Jazeera.
Mr Bambang said he does not know how Ahyudin is viewed by former ACT members now that the organization has dissolved.
“But in my opinion, there will still be those who support him and those who don’t,” he said.
Hamid Abidin, a member of the Indonesia Philanthropy Association, said that although the verdicts show that the police are aware of the misuse of charity funds, the law should be changed to punish such crimes more severely.
“The laws used to manage charities date back to 1961 and need to be revised and reformed,” Abidin told Al Jazeera.
“We also need to push for aid education in Indonesia. Many donors do not know that they have the right to ask where their donations are going or to request reports on how the money will be used.”
Garnadi Waldana Dharmaputra, a lawyer specializing in financial law and founder of the “Smart Donating” campaign which aims to educate people on how to manage charitable donations, described the ACT case as a “tipping point”.
“We know thousands of other organizations that also spend money. They may not be as complex as ACT, but the issues are the same,” Dharmaputra told Al Jazeera, referring to transparency, accountability and good governance as some of the biggest challenges in managing humanitarian organizations in Indonesia.
In its heyday, from 2018 to 2020, ACT was the largest charity in Indonesia, collecting $36m in public donations over the two years. In July last year, Indonesia’s Counter Terrorism Unit announced that it was investigating the transfer of money by ACT to alleged al-Qaeda operatives, which came to light following Tempo’s investigation into Boeing’s misappropriation of funds.
Last year, the United States Department of the Treasury announced sanctions against the Indonesian humanitarian organization World Human Care (WHC) for raising and giving money to extremist groups in Syria with the help of the people.
In 2021, Indonesian authorities arrested several members of a humanitarian organization that police said was a front for an al-Qaeda-linked group responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings.
Dharmaputra said he is now urging the government to change its decades-old law, which he believes is not the right thing to do because of the growing number of cases.
“We are on the right track, but I am concerned about where we are in Indonesia on the problem of managing aid agencies,” he said.
“We seem to be late on this issue, but the ACT case has proven to be a serious problem.”
A Boeing representative declined to comment.
