September 4, 2026 | 10:10 am
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - From January through August 2026, the Directorate-General of Customs thwarted 26 gold-smuggling attempts at airports across the country. The number of cases surged this year. Smugglers have also adopted increasingly diverse methods. Some turn gold into a powder and dissolve it into a gel. Others conceal gold inside their bodies. The methods closely resemble those used by drug couriers.
Hengky Tomuan Parlindungan Aritonang, Chief of the Soekarno-Hatta Airport Main Customs Directorate General Service Office, said gold-smuggling operations followed patterns similar to those of drug-trafficking networks. They used a disconnected cell structure. The following are excerpts from Hengky's interview with Tempo journalists Febriyan, Riky Ferdianto, and Riani Sanusi Putri at the Customs Directorate-General headquarters in East Jakarta on Monday, August 24, 2026.
When did gold smuggling begin to surge?
It started in January 2026, specifically after Finance Minister Regulation No. 80/2025, which imposed an export duty on gold, took effect. Once the regulation was issued, the companies that had previously exported gold gradually stopped. We discussed it internally at Customs. We wondered whether they might have shifted to other channels. That was when we began uncovering more cases.
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