Indonesian businessman fined over $370 mln for investment manipulation

An Indonesian corruption court on Thursday found businessman Benny Tjokrosaputro guilty in a stock manipulation case involving a state insurance firm Asabri and fined him 5.7 trillion rupiah ($371.67 million).
Tjokrosaputro was spared a jail sentence because he is already serving a life sentence over a separate case in 2020 linked to hundreds of millions of dollars of investment losses at another insurer Asuransi Jiwasraya, Ignatius Eko Purwanto, who led a panel of judges, said.
The businessman denied any wrongdoing during the trial and his lawyer Aditya W. Santoso said there had been no decision yet on whether to appeal.
Tjokrosaputro made international headlines in 2018 when he sued Goldman Sachs for $1 billion over the ownership of shares in an Indonesian company, a case he won at a lower court but lost at the Supreme Court a year later.
The panel of judges on Thursday ruled Tjokrosaputro was guilty of arranging for Asabri to buy overpriced stocks, which later lost their value, for the personal gain of himself and some of his business partners.