Prabowo’s Favored Tycoon Wants to Become Indonesia’s Richest Man

Andi’s story reflects the changing fortunes of the nation’s business elite.

Article content

(Bloomberg) — When Indonesia’s president meets with billionaires like Ray Dalio or other major foreign investors, the same man is often watching quietly in the background.

Article content

Dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, or occasionally a suit, he cuts an unassuming figure and tends to say little, even though his English is good, people familiar with him say, a deliberate tactic he uses to stay out of the spotlight. 

Article content

Article content

But his presence is notable, and increasingly noticed, as Prabowo Subianto upends the long-understood political pecking order for the Southeast Asian nation’s tycoons, in the process elevating a select few.

Article content

Article content

“Andi Syamsuddin Arsyad is a prominent entrepreneur,” Prabowo proclaimed to a group of Japanese investors dining at the presidential palace in December 2024. He nodded at Andi, who rose to his feet. 

Article content

Article content

That moment, two months after Prabowo was sworn in, was a telling sign of his regard for Andi, the son of a poor family from Borneo’s jungles who made his fortune in coal mining. He goes by the moniker Haji Isam, a nickname combining the honorific for a pilgrim to Mecca and a shortened form of his middle name, Syamsuddin.

Article content

Having helped bankroll Prabowo’s 2024 campaign, Andi has fast become one of the president’s favorite businessmen as some long-established wealthy families find themselves on the outer. The day after he was sworn in, Prabowo flew to Andi’s coastal hometown of Batulicin to express his gratitude in person.

Article content

The 49-year-old doesn’t harbor his own political ambitions, making him less of a threat to Prabowo, according to those who know Andi well and who requested anonymity to speak freely for this account. His dream rather is to become rich, they said, maybe even the wealthiest person in the country. It’s a bold ambition that perhaps belies a deeper desire to not merely possess wealth, but leave a mark upon the world too. Andi also has a philanthropy arm called the Haji Isam Foundation that provides education scholarships as well as free Umrah pilgrimages to Mecca.

Article content

Article content

To that end, a connection with Indonesia’s president is essential. Considering most of his businesses are unlisted, his fortune is hard to pin down, but people who know him say it easily exceeds $1 billion. They base that in part on his ability to spend several hundred million dollars financing Prabowo’s bid for the top job.

Article content

Andi didn’t respond to requests made through some of his aides or companies for an interview. There also wasn’t any response to requests for comments sent to his firms. 

Article content

A spokesperson for Prabowo’s office said engagements with “business leaders, investors, academics, civil society and other stakeholders are part of the government’s broader efforts to strengthen economic development, investment and national prosperity.”

Article content

The government communication agency spokesperson also noted that campaign financing is a matter of public record. “The government’s approach to the business community applies equally to all: those who invest in Indonesia’s development and comply with the law are partners in that effort and the law is applied without exception,” Prabowo’s office said in a statement.

Article content

Prabowo’s team spent about 208.2 billion rupiah ($11.5 million) on his 2024 presidential campaign, the second-highest among the three candidates. While Indonesia’s election commission does disclose the amount of funds received and spent, public documents don’t identify individuals or corporate donors by name unless they give their express consent.

Article content

According to filings, Prabowo’s campaign reported no contributions from outside individuals or groups although it received some 7.8 billion rupiah in services from private companies or other non-government entities. Critics have argued the actual amount spent in presidential elections is under-reported. Following the election, Indonesia Corruption Watch called for greater transparency around campaign donors.

Article content

Indonesia’s General Elections Commission, responding to Bloomberg News, said it doesn’t disclose the identities of campaign donors because the information contains personal data protected under the country’s public information laws. Election rules require candidates to report donors’ identities to the commission, but don’t require the agency to make them public, Commissioner Idham Holik said in a text message.

Article content

Article content

Prabowo views Andi as a useful financial backer — especially if he runs for a second term in 2029 — and a potential wedge against the old-guard, largely ethnic Chinese tycoons the president has targeted with land seizures, tax demands and pressure to buy so-called Patriot bonds at below-market yields. In elevating Andi, Prabowo is showing that he’s not altogether discarding the tradition of oligarchic power in Southeast Asia’s largest economy. The two men were first introduced by Prabowo’s predecessor, Joko Widodo.

Article content

Figures like Andi “operate most effectively not as presidential contenders but as influential actors who shape policy outcomes, resource allocation and political alignments from within dense networks of state-business relations,” said Faris Al-Fadhat, a professor of international political economy at Indonesia’s Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta. Their clout is “often exercised behind the scenes rather than through electoral office.”

Article content

Trissia Wijaya, McKenzie Fellow at the University of Melbourne Asia Institute, agrees, noting that “during the Jokowi administration, Andi was working behind the scenes. Now, he’s making it obvious he’s one of the key political business groups in Indonesia. It’s the emergence of a new business group in Indonesia whose interests are neatly aligned with Prabowo,” she said.

Article content

Article content

Their alliance does have its limits, however, on display most notably with the president’s abrupt move in late May to create a new state entity to oversee Indonesia’s exports of palm oil, coal and ferro-alloys. Prabowo kept his plan under wraps with a few advisers, and Andi was blindsided by the announcement, according to the people familiar.

Article content

Decades of patronage politics in Indonesia have also shown that alliances can end as easily as they’re forged. Still, Andi stands out for his access and ability to maneuver. One person who has interacted with him on business deals says Andi talks about wanting to contribute to Indonesia’s development and presents an image of being understated, but does so as a deliberate strategy to conceal his strengths. He’s a savvy negotiator, the person said.

Article content

Andi now oversees a one-million-hectare food estate in Papua that’s part of Prabowo’s push to bolster food security. He requested a coal mining quota of around 60 million tons this year, according to people familiar with the matter, almost double last year’s figure and one that if granted would put him among the top five miners in the Southeast Asian nation. It’s unclear if he ended up with a quota that large and those numbers aren’t made public.

Article content

Short and stocky, Andi, a devout Muslim, doesn’t drink. He travels mainly by private jet, often bringing his personal doctor, and he’s been accumulating high-end real estate in Jakarta. His conglomerate PT Jhonlin Group has interests spanning coal and nickel mining to cryptocurrency. While he’s relatively unknown outside Indonesia, he’s more frequently interacting with investors from China, Japan and Africa.

Article content

His story reflects the changing fortunes of Indonesia’s business elite, away from industrialists who built profitable, sturdy conglomerates over decades and toward younger Muslim executives with deep ancestral roots within the archipelago. Like Andi, they tend to come with less political baggage. 

Article content

They fit the bill for a president who operates with a small inner circle of trusted yet amenable confidants. They’ve recognized the way to get ahead is to support his vision of socialist intervention, investing in everything from food estates to free school meal programs.

Article content

To underscore his business acumen, Andi leans on his back story, which he paints as a classic rags to riches tale. One of 15 children, he worked as a truck driver after school, he said in a rare interview with Tempo in 2010. His life changed in 2003, he told the local magazine, when he met the owner of a coal mine who lent him money to rent heavy equipment for a contracting business.

Article content

Article content

From there Jhonlin — a mashup of his children’s names, daughter Liana and son Jhony — expanded into mine ownership, infrastructure, trucking and shipping. Andi built his own airport in his home town, a short drive from a cluster of mansions he owns. He’s had well publicized legal disputes with indigenous communities over land ownership. Local journalists investigating allegations of malpractice by some of his companies have been arrested on charges of criminal defamation.

Article content

In one case in 2020, police arrested a journalist after he reported that a tribe in South Kalimantan had complained to authorities about an alleged land grab by PT Jhonlin Agro Raya, Andi’s only major listed company. The firm denied the accusations. Some tribal members later filed a police complaint against the journalist, refuting they had made such accusations.

Article content

In a separate 2010 Tempo article, allegations surfaced of corruption between some police officers and coal executives in South Kalimantan, including Andi. In the interview, Andi denied the allegations, saying he didn’t have any ability to control the police. No charges were ultimately brought.

Article content

Article content

One person who has interacted with Andi over the years describes him as an exceptionally intelligent businessman. The person said that while Andi has never publicly responded to speculation regarding his alleged aggressive style of doing business, he has heard him casually remark that having such a reputation is not necessarily a bad thing.

Article content

While determining the valuation of his closely held empire is difficult, his coal business alone is set to sell about $3 billion of the fossil fuel this year, according to Bloomberg calculations based on project output and peer companies. Jhonlin Agro Raya has a market value of $952 million. It has secured a biodiesel contract with a subsidiary of state-owned oil and gas firm PT Pertamina Persero. Jhonlin Agro Raya is majority owned by PT Eshan Agro Sentosa, which in turn is controlled by Jhonlin.

Article content

His wealth is still outpaced by others, including those tycoons who emerged in the 1960s in the early days of the Suharto regime. Sukanto Tanoto, whose conglomerate Royal Golden Eagle includes palm oil, timber and gas, is currently Indonesia’s richest man with a fortune of some $23.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.

Article content

Indonesia’s more established top tycoons have taken notice of Andi and some have praised his business acumen in private conversations, people familiar with the interactions said.

Article content

Others who have had dealings with him describe him as someone who tunes into small operational details. When building a factory or manufacturing plant, he’ll query the exact number of workers required or question how roads will be constructed to ensure efficient deliveries. In meetings, he’s calm and observant. With trusted aides over a meal, he lets himself go a little, joking and laughing.

Article content

He watches closely how the Chinese investors he knows conduct business and tries to emulate them. In January, Wang Shudong, chairman of China Coal Energy Co., led a delegation to Indonesia for a business exchange, and met Andi.

Article content

According to people at several Chinese state-owned coal companies, China Coal is likely to cooperate with Andi on developing underground coal mining projects in Indonesia because opportunities for new open-pit coal mines are becoming increasingly limited. Indonesia’s easily accessible surface coal resources are gradually being depleted, making underground mining one of the few remaining avenues for large-scale resource development. Representatives for China Coal didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Article content

Article content

Coal remains the bedrock of Andi’s cashflow even as others face steep production cuts via quotas, something the industry association has said will ultimately lead to job losses. Andi made a series of mine acquisitions last year, some of which were outside his main base of South Kalimantan.

Article content

Unusually, he stops selling coal once prices dip below a certain level, rather than relying purely on indexes like almost every other miner in Indonesia, the people said. When prices are weak, that limits his downside, although benchmark futures are up around 23% this year.

Article content

His presence in nickel is far smaller, but growing. Andi controls at least two mines via nominees and has forged a partnership with CNGR Advanced Material Co., a Chinese battery-component manufacturer listed in China and Hong Kong.

Article content

He’s taken a 21.1% stake in a listed vehicle called PT Abadi Nusantara Hijau Investama that CNGR uses to hold some of its Indonesian assets for 936 billion rupiah. The firms had planned to build a smelter in South Kalimantan, but pivoted to a precursor cathode active material plant that was inaugurated in January by Defense Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin. Representatives for CNGR didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Article content

Article content

Andi has been critical to facilitating CNGR’s growth in Indonesia, smoothing problems around permitting and mine acquisitions, the people familiar with the matter say. Other mainland Chinese conglomerates, including Tsingshan Holding Group Co., have faced government scrutiny over their environmental records. Tsingshan for example, came under criticism from Sjafrie, a key advisor to Prabowo, for building a private airport at its sprawling industrial park in central Sulawesi, with questions raised about oversight and regulation.

Article content

Andi has also taken a majority stake in a proposed new industrial park in Malili in Southeast Sulawesi through nominees. His part share in the site, envisioned to one day house a plant from Chinese battery metals giant Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Co. and PT Vale Indonesia, a unit of Brazilian miner Vale SA, was acquired for just $465 from Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, according to that company’s annual report — the nominal price a reflection of the extensive sway Andi has with local officials. Huayou didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Article content

His palm oil plantations business meanwhile is bundled into Jhonlin Agro Raya, and his son serves as president commissioner, a bit like chairman of the board. The plantations are relatively small but feed a biodiesel refinery that’s benefited from a government move to blend more such fuel into the nation’s supply.

Article content

Most recently, Andi received a license to operate Indonesia’s second cryptocurrency exchange. The first exchange was established by Prabowo’s younger businessman brother, Hashim Djojohadikusumo.

Article content

Andi’s close associates are pushing him to diversify his assets, including by buying real estate, and establish business links beyond Indonesia. They’re suggesting he look at Singapore, Malaysia, India and South Africa.

Article content

While Andi has largely stayed in the background of politics, he did serve as deputy treasurer for Widodo’s reelection campaign in 2019. Before he left office, Jokowi blessed the creation of a special economic zone, with perks including tax breaks, in a regency in South Kalimantan proposed by a unit of Jhonlin. Representatives for Jokowi didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Article content

Article content

When Jokowi introduced Andi to Prabowo, Prabowo asked him to support his 2024 presidential campaign. Hashim, formerly Prabowo’s main financial backer, had run into funding trouble, partly due to footing his older brother’s political ambitions, Hashim told a Swiss court hearing a tax dispute, the Financial Times reported in 2024.

Article content

The several hundred million dollars that Andi gave was far more than requested, according to people familiar with the funding. Prabowo, they said, had become angered by smaller sums from other tycoons. Andi’s businesses now stand in contrast to some other magnates as Prabowo beefs up tax audits and seizes millions of hectares of palm oil plantations and mines.

Article content

Andi also pushed for his cousin, Andi Amran Sulaiman, to stay on as agriculture minister under Prabowo after he was appointed in 2023 by Widodo. His brother-in-law, Sulaiman Umar Siddiq, used to be deputy forestry minister. He’s no longer part of the cabinet or government and it’s unclear what his current employment status is. Sulaiman didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Article content

Article content

These days, Andi spends most of his time in the capital. His main residence in south Jakarta is in the exclusive Kebayoran Baru district. Properties in the area fetch around $10 million, according to online listings.

Article content

The compound of interconnected houses blends a mix of architectural styles, from a light-blue neoclassical manor to an imposing white villa reminiscent of Bali’s luxury resorts, complete with oversized hanging louvers and a roof terrace. It sits opposite the National Police headquarters and several ministry offices, and just a few houses from Prabowo’s longtime Jakarta residence.

Article content

Andi has been buying houses in another upscale neighborhood nearby, which he tends to demolish and rebuild as European-style mansions. Houses in the same area of Jakarta can fetch close to $5 million. He likes to drive now-discontinued Toyota FJ Cruisers, retro-styled SUVs known for their off-road capabilities. And while he favors t-shirts, many are from luxury brands like Italy’s Loro Piana.

Article content

There’s the possibility that Andi and other newer magnates end up being harder to control, according to Al-Fadhat from Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta. 

Article content

“As new tycoons accumulate capital through privileged access to state projects and policy networks, they won’t remain subordinate,” he said. “They tend to translate economic power into autonomous political leverage, gradually renegotiating their position vis-a-vis the state.”

Article content

For now, at least, both men seemingly appreciate the value of their alliance. A week after Independence Day in August, Prabowo awarded Andi the country’s second-highest civilian honor for boosting economic growth. He was the only tycoon recognized.

Article content

—With assistance from Alfred Cang and Chandra Asmara.

Article content