1,000 Lawmakers, 97,000 Soldiers, 11 Ministry Officials: Why Indonesia’s Gambling Crackdown Keeps Finding Rot at the Top

Indonesia’s war on illegal online gambling was supposed to be about shutting down criminal networks and protecting vulnerable citizens. Instead, it has become an exercise in institutional self-examination — each new investigation peeling back another layer of corruption among the very people tasked with enforcing the law. As the government’s multi-agency crackdown enters its third year with a cumulative $56.5 billion in tracked transactions, the numbers tell a devastating story: over 1,000 lawmakers caught gambling with public trust, 97,000 military and police personnel flagged for involvement, and 11 Ministry of Communication officials arrested for accepting bribes to keep illegal gambling sites online. The crackdown is working — transactions are down 20% — but the rot it keeps uncovering raises a fundamental question about whether Indonesia can truly enforce laws that its own officials keep breaking.

The Latest Numbers: February 2026 Update

Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority (OJK) released its latest enforcement data in early February 2026, confirming that the crackdown’s financial arm continues to expand. Authorities have now blocked 32,144 bank accounts and seized over $36 million in funds directly linked to online gambling operations. The numbers represent a significant escalation from the 5,000 accounts blocked through mid-2025, reflecting the government’s shift from website blocking to aggressive financial strangulation.

The most dramatic recent operation came in Bali in January 2026, when police arrested 39 Indian nationals running a sophisticated offshore betting operation called “Ram Betting Exchange.” Operating from rented villas in Kuta, the ring managed 811 active gambling accounts with a monthly turnover of approximately Rp 8 billion ($500,000). The operation targeted Indian bettors remotely, exploiting Indonesia’s digital infrastructure while serving foreign markets — a pattern that authorities say is increasingly common across Southeast Asia.

These latest figures build on the foundation laid by the government’s sweeping multi-agency offensive documented in our comprehensive November 2025 report. But while that report examined the crackdown’s full scope, the story that has emerged since is unmistakably about one thing: the staggering scale of corruption within the institutions leading the fight.

The Rot at the Top: Corruption Across Every Level of Government

The PPATK (Indonesia’s financial intelligence unit) has systematically cross-referenced gambling transaction data with government personnel databases, and the results have been politically explosive. More than 1,000 members of national and regional legislatures — the DPR and DPRD — were identified as having accounts linked to online gambling platforms, with a combined 63,000 transactions totaling approximately Rp 24 billion ($1.5 million). These are the same lawmakers who voted to criminalize online gambling and who publicly champion the crackdown during press conferences.

The military situation is even more staggering in scale. PPATK data flagged 97,000 members of the Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI) and National Police (Polri) with gambling-linked financial activity. While many of these cases involved small-stakes gambling, approximately 4,000 personnel have been formally sanctioned. President Prabowo responded by establishing 20 dedicated anti-gambling task forces within the military — an implicit acknowledgment that the problem is too widespread for existing disciplinary channels to handle.

This Ministry of Communication scandal is perhaps the most damaging revelation of the entire crackdown. Investigations revealed that 11 officials within the ministry’s content moderation division had been systematically accepting payments from gambling operators to whitelist their domains. At approximately Rp 8.5 million ($530) per site, the bribes were modest by corruption standards — but the impact was enormous. Roughly 1,000 of the approximately 5,000 gambling sites flagged for blocking were allowed to remain accessible, undermining the government’s most visible enforcement tool. The investigation into the broader money laundering infrastructure connected to these operations revealed sophisticated networks spanning multiple countries.

“We found that online gambling transactions involve not just ordinary citizens, but state officials, members of the security forces, and elected representatives. This is not a peripheral issue — it has penetrated the core of our institutions.”

— Ivan Yustiavandana, Head of PPATK (Indonesia’s Financial Intelligence Unit)

The Human Cost: Suicides, Poverty, and Welfare Cuts

Behind the institutional corruption statistics lies a devastating human toll that has become impossible for the government to ignore. Multiple military suicides linked to gambling debts have been publicly reported since 2024, with each case reinforcing the urgency of the crackdown while highlighting its failure to address root causes. A member of the Indonesian Navy stationed in Papua took his own life after accumulating debts through online gambling platforms. An Army soldier in Bogor died in similar circumstances. In one of the most disturbing incidents, a policewoman in Mojokerto, East Java, suffered severe burns after a fire linked to a domestic dispute triggered by gambling debts.

These cases are not isolated tragedies — they are symptoms of a systemic crisis. PPATK data indicates that approximately 70% of identified gamblers earn less than Rp 5 million ($305) per month, placing them in Indonesia’s lower-income brackets. Many of these individuals were found to be spending up to 90% of their income on gambling, a pattern of addiction-driven financial self-destruction that has devastated families across the archipelago. The government’s documented transaction decline suggests that enforcement is reaching some of these vulnerable populations, but the scale of the problem remains immense.

Perhaps the most politically charged consequence has been the welfare scandal. Cross-referencing gambling transaction data with social assistance databases revealed that 603,999 recipients of government welfare programs — including the Program Keluarga Harapan (PKH) conditional cash transfer — had been using their benefits to fund gambling activity. The government’s response was swift and sweeping: more than 300,000 recipients had their benefits terminated. After public backlash and a review process that acknowledged some recipients had been incorrectly flagged, approximately 7,200 were reinstated — a correction rate that suggests the vast majority of terminations were deemed justified.

“We cannot allow social assistance funds meant for the poorest Indonesians to be diverted to illegal gambling. The termination process was painful but necessary. We have reinstated those who were wrongly identified.”

— Saifullah Yusuf, Indonesian Minister of Social Affairs

From Site Blocking to Financial Strangulation: How the Crackdown Evolved

Indonesia’s approach to combating online gambling has undergone a radical transformation since 2023, evolving from a relatively conventional internet censorship model into one of the most comprehensive financial surveillance operations targeting gambling anywhere in the world. This evolution was driven by a simple realization: blocking websites was ineffective when the people operating the blocking system were taking bribes, and when gamblers could circumvent domain restrictions through VPNs and mirror sites within minutes.

The shift to financial enforcement mirrors approaches seen in other jurisdictions, notably Turkey’s bank enforcement approach targeting gambling-linked transactions through the banking system. However, Indonesia’s version is notably more aggressive in its scope, extending beyond banks to encompass digital wallets, QR payment systems, and government benefit databases — effectively creating a financial surveillance dragnet that touches nearly every form of electronic payment in the country.

Is It Working? The Numbers Say Yes — But Corruption Says It’s Complicated

By the raw metrics, Indonesia’s crackdown has produced genuinely significant results. Total gambling transaction volume declined 20% year-over-year, falling from Rp 359.81 trillion to Rp 286.84 trillion. The number of unique depositing accounts dropped from a peak of 9.7 million to 3.1 million active depositors. During Q1 2025 alone, monthly transaction volumes fell approximately 80% compared to the same period the previous year — a dramatic short-term impact that suggests the financial enforcement strategy was reaching users in ways that site blocking never could.

But the picture is more complicated than these headline numbers suggest. Despite the decline, an estimated 12.3 million Indonesians were still making deposits into gambling-linked accounts as of the most recent PPATK data — a number that indicates the market, while contracting, remains enormous. More critically, the corruption revelations have fundamentally damaged the crackdown’s credibility. When citizens learn that their lawmakers were gambling while passing anti-gambling laws, that soldiers were killing themselves over debts their commanders ignored, and that Ministry officials were selling access to the sites the government claimed to be blocking, it becomes difficult to sustain public confidence in the enforcement regime.

“Indonesia loses approximately $8 billion annually to illegal online gambling. This is not just a moral issue — it is an economic hemorrhage that undermines our development goals.”

— President Prabowo Subianto, addressing APEC leaders on transnational gambling networks

The scale of Indonesia’s challenge is significant even by regional standards. For comparison, South Korea’s $3.8 billion gambling empire — itself considered a major enforcement challenge — represents less than half of Indonesia’s estimated annual losses. The difference in scale underscores why Indonesia’s approach has been correspondingly more aggressive and invasive than comparable efforts elsewhere in Asia.

What Happens Next: AI Detection, International Cooperation, and the Credibility Question

The Indonesian government shows no signs of scaling back. PPATK received 43 million suspicious transaction reports in 2025 — a 22.5% increase over the previous year — and is investing in AI-powered detection systems designed to identify gambling-linked transactions in real-time across banking and digital payment platforms. International cooperation is expanding, with Indonesia using its APEC platform to push for coordinated action against transnational gambling networks operating from Cambodia, the Philippines, and other regional hubs.

E-wallet providers and QRIS payment networks remain key targets for expanded monitoring, as gambling operators increasingly abandon traditional bank transfers in favor of digital payment methods that were historically harder to trace. The government has signaled that the welfare cross-check model — comparing financial transaction data against government databases to identify individuals using public funds for gambling — will be expanded to additional benefit programs.

But the central question remains one of credibility. Indonesia’s crackdown has been genuinely ambitious and has produced measurable results. The 20% decline in transactions, the thousands of accounts blocked, the dismantling of foreign-operated betting rings — these are real achievements. Yet every corruption revelation undermines the moral authority that makes enforcement sustainable. Countries like Brazil’s biometric enforcement approach have invested heavily in technology-driven solutions that reduce human discretion — and therefore the opportunity for corruption. Whether Indonesia can achieve something similar, building enforcement systems robust enough to survive the very human weakness they are designed to combat, will determine whether this crackdown produces lasting change or merely displaces the problem while the rot continues to spread from within.