The announcement was made by Coordinating Minister for Political, Security and Legal Affairs, Luhut Panjaitan at a press conference here on Monday. He was accompanied by Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya and national police chief General Badrodin Haiti.
However, only the initials representing the names of these companies were made public.
Forestry and Environment Minister Siti Nurbaya said licenses of three companies were revoked. In Riau province, HSLs forest concession (HPH) was revoked while in Jambi province, DHLs environment permit and in West Kalimantan, MAS environment permit was revoked.
Sixteen other companies have had their permits frozen, including BMH in South Sumatra, SWI in South Sumatra, SRL in Riau, PBP in Jambi and BMJ in West Kalimantan. These firms forest product wood exploitation business permits (IUPHHK) were put on a freeze.
In Central Kalimantan, IFP, TKM and KH and DML in East Kalimantan have had their business permits revoked.
With regard to the plantations, the government froze the company licenses of SPW and HE in Central Kalimantan, WAJ, TRR and RPP in South Sumatra, LIH in Riau and BACP in North Kalimantan.
National police chief General Badrodin Haiti said the dossiers regarding the cases of three corporate suspects have been submitted to the prosecutors office. These are plantation company PHT in South Kalimantan and plantation companies ASP and MA in Central Kalimantan.
Meanwhile, the process of submitting the dossiers in case of two plantation companies in Riau and two plantation companies in West Kalimantan is underway.
Coordinating Minister Luhut Panjaitan said the action would not stop at these steps and "we will continue the investigation."
He said the government has designed a standard operating procedure to deal with forest fires to reduce these and their impact to a minimum level.
"We were caught off guard. We thought that the El Nino impact would be at level two, but later it became known that it was most severe. We admitted that our coordination while dealing with the problem was not so good," he said.(*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
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