PT Toba Pulp Lestari Director named suspect in Rp2 trillion corruption case

The Attorney General's Office of Indonesia has named Anwar Laden, the Director and Corporate Secretary of PT Toba Pulp Lestari (PT TPL), as a suspect in a major transfer pricing corruption case. Investigators forcibly picked up Laden in Medan, North Sumatra, after he failed to respond to summons.

Laden is accused of illegal under-invoicing practices between 2008 and 2025. The scheme involved manipulating Harmonized System (HS) codes to misclassify products; specifically, classifying dissolving pulp as paper grade pulp or bleached hardwood kraft pulp (BHKP) to lower reported values. These transactions involved exports to affiliate DP MMI, Ltd. and local sales to the APR factory.

The corruption, which allegedly included bribing tax examiners, has resulted in an estimated state financial loss of approximately Rp2 trillion. Investigators have already recovered Rp500 billion from the Directorate General of Taxes. Laden has been detained for 20 days at the Salemba Detention Center.