Temasek Holdings and GIC denied accusations by former Indonesian trade minister Muhammad Lutfi that they helped trigger last week's Indonesian stock sell-off and then bought assets at depressed prices. MSCI said last week it expects to remove Indonesia from its global indices unless the country makes significant improvements in market governance; the announcement precipitated the largest daily fall in the Indonesian market since the 1998 Asian financial crisis. Lutfi alleged Temasek and GIC used

Temasek Holdings and GIC denied accusations by former Indonesian trade minister Muhammad Lutfi that they helped trigger last week's Indonesian stock sell-off and then bought assets at depressed prices. MSCI said last week it expects to remove Indonesia from its global indices unless the country makes significant improvements in market governance; the announcement precipitated the largest daily fall in the Indonesian market since the 1998 Asian financial crisis. Lutfi alleged Temasek and GIC used their influence with MSCI to pressure action against Indonesia, creating panic that crashed the index so they could repurchase top assets cheaply. Temasek's head of Asia Pacific, Fok Wai Hong, called the claim baseless and said neither Temasek nor its staff had contacted or influenced MSCI. GIC said the claims were untrue and that its investment decisions are driven by company and asset fundamentals, not index classifications or country-level judgments.