Criminalizing Corporate Greenwashing to Address Ecological Fraud Under the Indonesian Legal Framework



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© 2026 Riyan Al Fajri

Greenwashing enables corporations to project an image of environmental responsibility while concealing environmentally harmful practices. In Indonesia, this conduct remains regulated through fragmented legal regimes and has not been formulated as a distinct criminal offense. This study examines how corporate greenwashing can be conceptualized as a criminal offense under Indonesian law and whether such a formulation justifies a shift from civil and administrative enforcement toward criminal liability. Using normative doctrinal legal research with statutory, conceptual, and comparative approaches, the study analyses greenwashing through the core elements of criminal liability, namely actus reus and mens rea, evaluates current Indonesian regulatory gaps, and compares selected foreign legal approaches. It finds that serious greenwashing can be understood as a form of corporate deception, but the existing Indonesian framework remains fragmented and inadequate to support coherent criminal liability. This study concludes that Indonesia should adopt an indirect criminalization model supported by a four-element offense structure to provide a clearer doctrinal and regulatory basis for addressing serious greenwashing

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