Chinese connected financial institutions are taking over Indonesia
Taking advantage of corruption
Truly uncertain time is looming over us. While crisis is horrible, there are opportunities one can swoop and benefit among the fallen angels. One can decide to do it ethically, or one can do the opposite.
I believe there is a range to ethicality, one can be super ethical, one can be stepping in the grey, or be in the complete dark side.
One can choose to buy into the market at a discount, one may buy up drowing businesses, or one can just take public money and be that your profit.
So what if one is a Founder and CEO of a startup? Should one take a position in the government? What about taking government contract? That’s all fair, when it is fair.
What about taking both of the above, during a pandemic? That’s fair, when it is fair. So what did two startup founders did wrong here?
Let’s hope this could become a cautionary tale for entrepreneurs around the world. First, we’ll start with Andy Taufan — CEO of a fintech startup, named Amartha Mikro Fintek. What did he do then?
So many people are getting unemployed, and it’s causing hunger and starvation, even death in Indonesia. What is the government doing in this current condition, short answer — not much, we’ll talk about this in more detail with the second case of entrepreneur later down the story.
So how is society holding on without a famine? Well, thank God — we have a caring society where people are still helping each other — I would however, put forth the argument that the government might be utilizing the kindness of the people to avoid putting up the money to prevent the hunger.
Municipalities are heavily affected by this, as this May coincide with the Holy Month of Ramadhan where everybody in the cities are going on a massive exodus back home, we call it Lebaran — very similar to the exodus of the Chinese New Year, which coincidentally happened in 25th January of the same year.
How do all these ties back to our entrepreneur here? Andy Taufan was responsible for sending letters promoting his startup to municipalities all around the country, exploiting his position by using a government letterhead on his letter with the code number of 003/S-SKP-ATGP/IV/2020.
Claiming that his company was working together with the central government — which was news to everybody, to ‘assist’ decentralized local volunteers (which are essentially your neighbors, local entrepreneurs, and young people) in their fight against hunger and starvation.
With his name and the company he’s leading forever tarnished, Andy Taufan eventually stepped down only after our second entrepreneur resigned from his position — his name is Belva Devara.
Who is Belva Devara? He is CEO of a company delving in the recent decade trend of online video class. What can a company submerging themselves in the online video class business — be doing something that is so horrible?
As I’ve mentioned above, people are going through hunger, starvation, even death. What could be the most sensible thing a government be doing in the current condition — is it handing out food for the poor? Clean water? Maybe energy, wether it’s gas for cooking or electricity for your house — because one thing that most people internationally don’t know, is that both gas and the electric companies are owned by government — and we do have to pay for those, including the poor. Wouldn’t it be fair, that we pay taxes all these years — and only for this year, they could be using that money for the people and not for building a new capital city in Borneo — destroying rainforest as the side effect.
Unsurprisingly the government did none of the above, instead — they opt for providing the poor with free online video classes. Which suddenly everybody became poor — because half of the population was the so called ‘economically vulnerable’. But hey, look at the bright side — now half of the population are qualified for free online video classes.
I have 100% certainty, that you’ve figured out where this is going — answer is, of courses Belva Devara gets a pie in this. And his company gets to be directly paid by the government for the online video classes it provides to the poor, which from my point of view — is a smoke screen for corruption.
This continues the subsequent terrible decisions the government has made since January. I’ve written a rundown of statements made by government officials throughout the pandemic that summarizes their attitudes.
