Customs Enforcement and IMEI Registry Integrity Against Black Market Mobile Phones at an Indonesian Airport

Abstract

Mobile phones that enter Indonesia outside the official import procedure cost the state duties and taxes and weaken the IMEI control designed to stop them. This study examines the role of Bea Cukai Juanda in enforcing the law against black market mobile phones and assesses whether the rules it enforces are effective. It uses a normative-empirical legal design that combines statute, case, and conceptual approaches with a single case study of Bea Cukai Juanda. Primary data come from semi-structured interviews with officers, and legal materials and enforcement documents supplement them. The analysis applies the five factors of legal effectiveness developed by Soerjono Soekanto. The study finds that Bea Cukai Juanda acts as a front-line enforcer that inspects passengers and consignments, collects duties and taxes, and registers the IMEI of phones bought abroad, while the registry and blocking powers sit with other ministries. The rules are adequate on paper but only partly effective. Two cases explain why. In 2023, insiders uploaded 191,995 IMEI numbers into the registry with an estimated loss of 353 billion rupiah. In 2025, jockeys in Batam registered phones with residents’ identity data to avoid duties and taxes. The enforcer and facility factors are the weakest, so registry integrity matters more than the wording of the rules. The study recommends stricter registry access control, identity verification at registration, shared data across agencies, platform cooperation, and officer training.