Indonesia Arrests Prabowo’s Chief of Staff in Sweeping Wiretap Scandal
JAKARTA — Indonesian police have arrested President Prabowo Subianto’s chief of staff and two serving police generals over an alleged illegal wiretapping operation that reached into the presidency, the media, civil society and business.
Police identified the suspects as Listyo Sigit Prabowo, presidential chief of staff and former national police chief; Ahrie Sonta Nasution, head of the National Police’s international relations division; and Eko Hadi Santoso, a senior officer in the force’s security and intelligence agency. Listyo is not related to the president.
Image credit and license: Wikimedia Commons.
The arrests strike at the center of Indonesia’s security establishment. Listyo led the national police before Prabowo appointed him chief of staff on October 1. Investigators now allege that senior officers used the force’s own interception infrastructure outside lawful procedures.
A surveillance system turned inward
Asep Safrudin, head of the national police criminal investigation agency, said the suspects allegedly tapped telephone numbers belonging to the president, state officials, political figures, journalists, community leaders, NGO activists and businesspeople. The scale of that list turns the case into more than an internal police scandal: it raises the possibility of systematic surveillance across the institutions meant to scrutinize state power.
Investigators say the operation ran during 2025 and 2026 through the police Lawful Interception Management System. They also accuse the suspects of deleting interception logs in October 2026, an allegation that suggests an attempt to erase the system’s audit trail just as Listyo moved from police headquarters into the presidential palace.
Police said they seized 11 mobile phones, an iPad and four flash drives. Investigators have questioned ten witnesses and three experts. The suspects face allegations under Indonesia’s electronic information law covering illegal interception, unauthorized access and destruction of electronic data. Those remain allegations; prosecutors have not yet proved them in court.
Coordinating Law Minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra said Prabowo learned of the case from the current police chief. “Imagine the president being intercepted and wiretapped, and ministers being wiretapped,” Yusril said. “We do not even know why this was done. This is not a simple matter; it is a serious issue for a country.”
The test is accountability
Authorities have not established a motive, and police said they had found no evidence of treason. The three suspects have not publicly answered the allegations. That uncertainty matters: the investigation must distinguish verified conduct from speculation while preserving devices, access records and the chain of command behind every interception request.
The case also tests whether Indonesia can investigate the police through a process strong enough to command public trust. A surveillance platform built for lawful investigations can become a political weapon when senior officials can bypass warrants, hide targets or delete logs. Journalists and NGOs on the alleged target list have a direct interest in an independent accounting, not only an internal review.
Surveillance law cannot rest on the rank of the official operating the console. Warrants, minimization rules, immutable logs and independent oversight separate a targeted investigation from political monitoring. If investigators prove that senior officers disabled those safeguards, the breach would implicate not only individual conduct but the architecture that allowed it.
Prabowo’s government now faces two immediate obligations. First, it must secure the interception system and place its records beyond the reach of anyone implicated. Second, it must tell unlawfully targeted people what happened, subject to legitimate evidentiary limits, and create an external audit capable of tracing who authorized, executed and concealed each tap.
The arrests show that the state can move against powerful police figures. The harder test begins now: whether Indonesia exposes the full surveillance network, protects those allegedly targeted and prevents the same machinery from being quietly rebuilt.
Sources
Reporting and verification: Reuters · Associated Press · ANTARA · Channel News Asia
Hero photograph: official portrait of Listyo Sigit Prabowo by the Indonesian National Police, public domain.
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