Founder of eFishery receives 9-year prison sentence

The former CEO and co-founder of Indonesian aquaculture startup eFishery, Gibran Huzaifah, has been given a nine-year prison sentence after being found guilty of embezzlement and money laundering, according to reports by Bloomberg, Deal Street Asia, and other news outlets.

The former CEO, who co-founded in the company in 2013, was suspended in 2024 after reports of financial misconduct emerged, with Huzaifah under investigation over reporting on the company's performance and revenue, according to Deal Street Asia, which first broke the news. He was later placed under arrest by Indonesian police, together with two other executives at the company, former Vice Presidents Angga Hadrian Raditya and Andri Yadi.

According to Bloomberg, in addition to the prison term, Huzaifah has also been fined IDR 1 billion (approx. €49,100 / US $53,000), while Raditya and Yadi have also been handed prison sentences of nine and seven years respectively, as well as fines of IDR 1 billion each.

Founded in 2013, eFishery appeared to be one of Indonesia's most significant business success stories. In 2023, the company secured US $200 Million from its Series D Funding round, taking it to a total valuation of US $1.4 billion, and making the startup the first aquaculture "unicorn", and the 15th Indonesian company to pass the US $1 billion valuation mark.

However, it later emerged that the company's financial statements were deliberately inflated, with Huzaifah confirming in a 2025 interview with Bloomberg that he had substantially altered the accounts in order to avoid a financial collapse. According to reports, the losses for investors amounted to US $300 million.

Investors in eFishery's Series D round included Malaysia's largest public sector pension fund, Kumpulan Wang Persaraan (KWAP), Switzerland-based impact fund responsAbility, and early investor multi-stage venture capital firm 500 Global, in addition to existing investors such as NorthStar, Singapore's Temasek, Japan's SoftBank, and eFishery's largest shareholder, Aqua-Spark.

In a public written statement published via LinkedIn last month, Aqua-Spark founders Amy Novogratz and Mike Velings directly addressed the matter, noting that they had not previously been able to publicly comment on the eFishery case due to the ongoing investigation.

"What the CEO of eFishery and the people around him did was wrong and they are answering for it in court. They systematically inflated performance data to attract capital and sustain a fiction that did not reflect reality. There is no version of a difficult funding environment, or pressure to perform, that makes that acceptable," the statement read.

They went on to emphasise that, in their view, the original business itself had real potential. “eFishery did not need to go in this direction. It was a real company with real technology and a genuinely important vision […] The tragedy is not just what was lost, but what was possible and what was thrown away,” they said.

The Aqua-Spark founders also acknowledged that the case had prompted them to examine their own assumptions as investors, including how they assess founders, verify performance data, and monitor governance standards across their portfolio.

Novogratz and Velings said that the scandal had wider ramifications for the aquaculture sector, as eFishery had secured capital from mainstream sources "that rarely finds its way into aquaculture."

"It was evidence that this industry could compete for serious money on its own merits. When the fraud came to light, that pipeline didn’t just slow, it closed. Rebuilding confidence with investors who took a chance and got burned is hard, slow work," they said.

They argued that the aquaculture sector remains "chronically underfunded" and urged investors to "not let one company’s failure define this industry".

"This industry is too important, and too close to where it needs to be, to be defined by one bad actor," they concluded.

The full statement by Aqua-Spark can be viewed here.