Charity Executives Jailed for Pocketing Millions Donated to Boeing Crash Victims

Three top executives of a major Indonesian charity were convicted of embezzlement on Tuesday for stealing money intended for families and communities affected by the 2018 Lion Air plane crash.

In 2019, U.S. aerospace company Boeing pledged $50 million in financial assistance to the 189 grieving families who lost loved ones in the crash. But investigators found that top executives at Aksi Cepat Tanggap (ACT), an Islamic relief organization entrusted with distributing some of this compensation, stole millions from these funds.

ACT founder Ahyudin, who goes by one name, was handed a 3.5 year prison term after he was found guilty of misappropriating $7.8 million out of $9.2 million funneled through the organization by Boeing. Ibnu Khajar and Hariyana Hermain, ACT’s former president and vice president respectively, were also handed three year prison terms. 

The charity is one of Indonesia’s largest, receiving an average of $36 million in annual donations between 2018 and 2020, and it was chosen as a local counterpart organization for the Boeing Community Investment Fund. The airline’s $100 million initiative was created in 2019 to fund charitable projects in communities impacted by the Lion Air crash and the Ethiopian Airlines 302 crash.

Lion Air Flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea on Oct. 29, 2018 only 13 minutes after takeoff, killing all 189 people onboard. Investigators found that the Boeing 737 MAX’s flawed anti-stall system was ultimately responsible for the crash. Just five months later, in March 2019, the same anti-stall system caused Ethiopia Airlines 302 to crash, killing all 157 people onboard. The two incidents sparked global outrage and the grounding of all 737 MAX aircrafts worldwide. 

In July, the three men were charged with embezzlement after allegations of widespread fraud involving the Boeing funds came to light in an exposé by Indonesian magazine Tempo. The indictment later stated that only six of a proposed 70 social welfare projects came to fruition under ACT, while recipients in impacted communities complained of corner cutting and shoddy work by the charity on the work they did do.

Instead, the court heard, the funds were used to inflate the executives’ salaries and pay outstanding debts on ACT’s sister company. Ahyudin took home a salary of more than $16,000 per month, around 85 times the average Indonesian monthly salary, and owned several cars. In July, Indonesia's Counter Terrorism Unit also announced they were investigating the alleged transfer of funds to ACT members with links to terrorist organization Al-Qaeda. It’s unclear if this link was ever substantiated.

Prosecutors sought a four year jail sentence for each of the men, the maximum handed out for embezzlement in Indonesia. But with that threshold not even met, many are calling their punishment inadequate. Anton Sahadi, a spokesperson for the victims’ families, told local news agencies after the ruling that they got off lightly.

“They deliberately misused the funds. It’s the same as killing,” he told outlet BenarNews. “They should receive heavier punishments, 12 years, 15 years, 20 years, for example.”

Additional reporting by Antariksa Bumiswara

Follow Alastair McCready on Twitter.

Follow Caleb Quinley on Twitter.