As the construction of Indonesia’s future capital Nusantara faced delays, false posts surfaced online claiming President Prabowo Subianto announced he would reallocate funds for the Islamic hajj pilgrimage to finance the project. But there was no official report of any such declaration as of May 1, 2025, and the posts feature a doctored news report.
“President Prabowo: I will continue construction of the new capital. There are 300 trillion rupiahs remaining in the hajj fund that was donated by the people,” reads the headline of the purported news report shared in a TikTok video on April 21, 2025.
A swear word in Javanese was superimposed on the clip.
Screenshot of the false post, captured on April 25, 2025
Similar posts surfaced elsewhere on TikTok and on Facebook as construction of the multi-billion-dollar Nusantara city continued at breakneck speed (archived link).
Indonesia’s capital-to-be, carved out of dense jungle in Borneo, was planned to replace traffic-clogged and sinking Jakarta but the project has been plagued by delays.
Local media Kompas reported in April that the relocation of government workers has been postponed until further instruction from Prabowo (archived link).
But there has been no official announcement from the president about using government-managed hajj funds for Nusantara’s construction as of May 1.
The assets — earmarked for the country’s Muslim population for the Islamic hajj pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca — are managed through an independent body called the Hajj Fund Management Agency (BPKH) (archived here and here).
A Google reverse image search found the original news report published by CNBC Indonesia with the same photo of Prabowo, byline and timestamp (archived link).
Screenshot comparison between the fake report (L) and the original CNBC Indonesia article with similarities highlighted by AFP
The article reported on Prabowo’s announcement that the government will cover five percent of the interest from loans taken out by labour-intensive businesses, but there is no mention of the new capital or the hajj fund in the report.
The picture in the report was taken at the 40-minute mark of a live stream that the Ministry of Education published on its YouTube channel on March 13, where Prabowo talked about eradicating corruption (archived link).
AFP debunked a similar claim in June 2024 about hajj fund reallocation.
An economic researcher specialising in Islamic economics at Indonesia’s Padjadjaran University said the hajj fund is invested in low-risk instruments.
“The hajj fund body has a legal mandate to invest the money, but the government does not directly instruct them how to invest the fund,” Cupian, who goes by one name, told AFP on April 30 (archived link).
BPKH’s latest report released in December 2024 did not mention any funding for the new capital (archived link).
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