Indonesia’s Supreme Court has upheld a lower court verdict ordering PT National Sago Prima (NSP), a subsidiary of palm oil and palm kernel producer Sampoerna Agro, to pay IDR 1 trillion (US$69 million) in fines for causing forest fires in 2015. The lawsuit against NSP was filed by Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLHK) to the South Jakarta District Court in 2016. The court found that the fires has been caused by NSP’s negligence and ordered the company to pay IDR 319 billion in fines and another IDR 753 billion to cover the cost of rehabilitating the approximately 3,000 hectares of land on the Meranti Islands in Riau affected by the fires. The IDR 1 trillion fine is the largest ever imposed on a plantation company for environmental damages in Indonesia and the ruling offers legal precedence for other environmental damage cases filed against similar companies.

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Business & Human Rights Resource Centre