Indonesian Police Vow Crackdown on Capital Market Fraud
Jakarta. National Police Chief Listyo Sigit Prabowo on Tuesday reaffirmed the police force’s commitment to crack down on crimes in the capital market, including trading manipulation and stock price rigging.
Sigit said fraud in the stock market undermines Indonesia’s investment climate and that law enforcement has a duty to protect healthy market fundamentals to support sustained economic growth.
“We continue to monitor capital market fluctuations and identify parties potentially engaged in stock price rigging, because such practices clearly cause harm,” Sigit said in Jakarta.
Earlier this month, police detained three suspects in an alleged trading manipulation case on the Indonesia Stock Exchange involving Multi Makmur Lemindo, Narada Aset Manajemen, and Mina Padi Aset Manajemen.
Investigators allege that executives at the firms manipulated trading by arranging share purchases through affiliated entities to artificially inflate stock prices — transactions that did not reflect the companies’ underlying performance.
Police have also frozen bank and securities accounts belonging to several brokerage firms, with a combined value of Rp 674 billion (about $40 million), as part of a broader probe into alleged insider trading and market manipulation.
The enforcement push follows a turbulent period for Indonesia’s capital market after a report by MSCI flagged transparency concerns and alleged coordinated transactions on the local exchange. The report triggered a sharp sell-off that sent the benchmark index down nearly 7% and erased roughly $74 billion in market capitalization during the final week of January.
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