You Can't See One-Fifth of the World Supply of Tin

In November 2025, Indonesian military helicopters descended on Bangka Island's coastline, part of a sweeping crackdown on illegal tin mining operations. President Prabowo Subianto's administration framed the raids as a decisive break from decades of corruption—restoring order to a sector that supplies nearly 30% of the world's tin for semiconductors, electric vehicles, and consumer electronics.

But there’s a catch: the company now leading this "cleanup" is PT Timah, the state-owned enterprise whose former directors were convicted in 2023 of laundering $20 billion worth of illegally mined tin. The new leader is Retired Army Colonel Restu Widiyantoro, who was appointed in October 2025 during a ceremony where Prabowo personally transferred $420 million in seized smelters and rare earth assets to PT Timah's control.

For global technology procurement officers and ESG compliance teams, this catch creates a dangerous illusion. Standard due diligence tools will flag "government enforcement action" as a positive signal as it’s evidence of regulatory tightening and supply chain cleanup. The ground truth is more complex: Indonesia hasn't eliminated opacity in its tin supply chain. It centralized it under military-state control, making the origins of tin harderto trace, not easier.

The Mechanics of a $20 Billion Fraud

Between 2015 and 2022, PT Timah operated as a facilitator for a massive shadow economy. An investigation by Indonesia's Attorney General's Office found that PT Timah executives allowed unlicensed miners to operate within the company's own concessions, then "repurchased" illegally extracted tin through a network of shell companies at inflated prices—effectively laundering the ore into the legal supply chain.

The scale was staggering. According to Indonesia's Financial and Development Supervisory Agency (BPKP), the scheme caused Rp 300 trillion (approximately $20 billion) in total state losses—including Rp 271 trillion in environmental degradation from unregulated pits and coastal dredging. In late 2024, former PT Timah President Director Mochtar Riza Pahlevi Tabrani and Finance Director Emil Ermindra were sentenced to 20 years in prison. Yet PT Timah itself, as a corporate entity, faced no consequences.

From Corruption Cleanup to Military Control

The "reform" that followed was a pivot toward militarization, not a return to civilian oversight. President Prabowo Subianto, a former special forces commander, has systematically placed retired military officers in leadership positions across Indonesia's state-owned mining companies — strategic repositioning of a state asset under military command.

Restu Widiyantoro  is emblematic here. Widiyantoro is a retired Army colonel who was awarded the honorary rank of Brigadier General by Prabowo just days before overseeing the handover of seized private smelters to PT Timah. In October 2025, Prabowo personally transferred $420 million worth of confiscated assets—including smelters previously operated by companies convicted in the corruption scheme—directly to PT Timah's control under Widiyantoro's leadership. 

At a recent mining conference, a Ministry of Defence official explained that its role in the critical mineral sector was to create a "safe environment for development and investment." In other words, Indonesia now views tin not just as a commodity, but as a strategic national security asset requiring military-grade control.

When the State Becomes the Black Box

The crackdown's mechanics reveal a significant issue with transparency. PT Timah controls 125 mining permits covering 473,000 hectares, with 117,000 hectares concentrated in Bangka Belitung—the island chain that supplies nearly one-fifth of global tin production. Artisanal miners who once operated in legal gray zones have been forced into two choices: formalize under PT Timah's umbrella or face prosecution.

The state-military monopoly:

• Controls both extraction and processing, eliminating independent verification points;
  
  
• Runs overseer "task forces" like the Nanggala unit, which reports directly to Widiyantoro and has identified "powers we don't control" backing illegal operations; and,
  
  
• Plans offshore expansion to target Batu Beriga, a protected marine habitat, under the banner of "national resource security."
  
  

When the state acts as miner, regulator, and military-backed enforcer simultaneously, independent auditing is nearly impossible. This is an opaque supply chain.

The Cost of Opacity in Supply Chains

For global technology and renewable energy sectors, the militarization of Indonesian tin is is a systemic compliance risk. Indonesia accounts for approximately 30% of global tin production, with Bangka-Belitung alone supplying nearly one-fifth of the world's total. As tin becomes "opaque" under PT Timah's state-military monopoly, it creates immediate friction with a tightening web of global regulations spanning multiple jurisdictions.

Under the EU's Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), companies are legally required to map their supply chains beyond Tier 1 suppliers and address adverse human rights and environmental impacts. The directive complements the EU Conflict Minerals Regulation (2017/821), which specifically targets tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold (3T + G), requiring importers to conduct due diligence on smelters and refiners. In the US, too, section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act requires companies to trace 3T + G minerals back to smelters and refiners.

The origin and downstream supply chain of one fifth of the world’s tin supply sources from a state-sanctioned entity: problematic to say the least under ESG frameworks that prioritize transparency and independent verification. How can third-party auditors verify environmental and labor standards when mining sites are managed by military-backed task forces like Nanggala, which reports directly to a retired general?

Risk Quantified

The $20 billion corruption scandal revealed that "government oversight" was previously a facade for laundering. Replacing that facade with military command shielded risk from scrutiny. Companies relying on a "government crackdown" narrative as due diligence cover may face significant reputational damage and legal penalties if componentry is publicly linked to unresolved environmental destruction in Bangka-Belitung and systemic graft and corruption.

Under CSDDD, non-compliance can result in fines up to 5% of global turnover. For a major semiconductor manufacturer with $50 billion in annual revenue, that's a potential $2.5 billion penalty—far exceeding the cost of robust supply chain mapping.

Indonesia's tin sector transformation quietly reshaped global supply chains in real time. For procurement officers at semiconductor manufacturers, EV battery producers, and solar panel suppliers, the challenge is no longer simply avoiding "conflict minerals." It is proving the legitimacy of tin sourced from a system where the state acts simultaneously as miner, regulator, and military enforcer.

This is where conventional due diligence fails. Standard screening tools flag "government enforcement action" as a positive signal. But when enforcement consolidates control rather than creates transparency, compliance teams face an audit impossibility: How do you verify what you cannot independently access?

Evidencity's Illicit Network Intelligence (INI) reveals the hidden networks, beneficial ownership structures, and military-state connections that surface-level screening misses. 

Indonesia's crackdown has made risk invisible. And in 2026, invisibility is liability.