When Administrative Sanctions Meet Criminal and Civil Liability: PERMENLH 6/2026

Administrative sanctions are often assumed to settle an environmental case. PERMENLH 6/2026 takes the opposite position. Several of its provisions make clear that an administrative penalty runs alongside, and does not absorb, civil and criminal liability. Understanding where these tracks meet is central to reading the regulation correctly.

The Issue

A firm facing suspension or revocation might reasonably ask whether that penalty closes the matter. The regulation answers directly. Pasal 57 states that suspension (pembekuan) of a business licence or government approval does not release the operator from outstanding compliance obligations, from civil liability, or from criminal liability. Pasal 59 repeats the rule for revocation (pencabutan). The heaviest administrative measures, in other words, leave the operator exposed on two further fronts, and a revoked permit is not a discharge.

Key Provisions

The parallel structure begins at the inspection stage. Pasal 30 requires the supervision report, where it finds non-compliance, to record a recommendation that may combine an administrative sanction, a criminal sanction, and environmental dispute resolution. The three responses are listed together, signalling that they are not mutually exclusive. The same logic returns at the follow-up stage, where Pasal 72 allows a report to recommend criminal sanctions and dispute resolution in addition to fresh or intensified administrative measures where a suspected crime or an environmental dispute appears.

Government coercion (paksaan pemerintah) carries its own liability bridge. Pasal 42 lets the authority take over pollution control and the restoration of environmental functions where the operator fails to act, appoint a third party to do the work, and charge the cost against a remediation guarantee fund that the operator must maintain. The financial responsibility for harm therefore follows the operator even when the state performs the cleanup.

Obstruction is treated as a matter for the criminal process rather than the administrative one. Pasal 33 prohibits blocking a supervisor, concealing or falsifying data, and intimidating inspectors, and requires the supervisor to report such conduct to the civil-service investigators or the police.

Implications

The regulation also guards against under-enforcement by officials. Pasal 37 gives the minister or agency head the power to impose a sanction directly where a governor, regent, mayor, or zone authority deliberately fails to act on a serious violation, and Pasal 37 fixes a seven-day window after the inspection report is received before that central power engages. This backstop prevents a local decision not to sanction from becoming a de facto immunity.

For an operator, the combined effect is that compliance cannot be reduced to paying a fine or accepting a suspension. Pasal 57 and Pasal 59 mean that civil claims for environmental harm and any criminal exposure survive the administrative outcome, while Pasal 42 keeps the operator financially responsible for restoration. The administrative track is the fastest route to a remedy, but it is not the only one, and it does not extinguish the others. Timing reinforces the point: an administrative decision can be issued and enforced quickly through the licensing system under Pasal 65, while a criminal referral or a civil claim proceeds on its own schedule, so the three responses can run at the same time rather than in turn.

Regulatory Context

This layering reflects the parent statute, the 2009 environmental protection law as carried into PP 22/2021, which preserves distinct administrative, civil, and criminal avenues. PERMENLH 6/2026 operationalises that separation at the level of day-to-day enforcement, so that a single breach can generate an administrative decision, a civil exposure, and a criminal referral from the same inspection record. Reading any one sanction in isolation understates the full liability picture the regulation creates.

Read the full regulation in the CRPG Law Database.

Methodology: This memo summarises the official regulation text and is not legal advice; report corrections to contact@crpg.info.

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