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The Underworld Podcast

The Shaman-Gangsters Who Built Indonesia

The Underworld Podcast

The Underworld Podcast

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.6871 Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For centuries, brigands, gangsters and street toughs ruled the island of Java so thoroughly that they were woven into local myths. But in the 20th century, when the world bounded towards war, mob bosses in Jakarta spotted a chance to turn underworld kudos into an independent nation. When the war ended, and Indonesia dove into chaos, a handful of kingpins would emerge as the architects of a new, modern state. But the madness was only just beginning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm Josh Mankowitz, and I hope you'll join us for Season 4 of Dateline Missing in America.

0:05.9

In each episode of Dateline's award-winning series, we will focus on one missing person's case

0:12.0

and hear from the families, the friends, and the investigators all desperate to find them.

0:18.5

You will want to listen closely. Maybe you could help investigators solve a mystery.

0:23.8

Dateline, missing in America.

0:25.5

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

0:33.1

Jan Marselech was a model of German corporate success.

0:37.0

It seemed so damn simple for him.

0:40.0

Also, it turned out, a fraudster.

0:43.0

Where does the money come from?

0:44.7

That was something that I always was questioning myself.

0:48.0

But what if I told you that was the least interesting thing about him?

0:50.9

His secret office was less than 500 meters down the road. I often ask myself

0:56.2

now, did I know the true Jan at all? Certain things in my life since then have gone terribly wrong.

1:04.3

I don't know if they followed me to my home. It looks like the ingredients of a really grand spy story because this ties together the cold war with the new one.

1:18.0

Listen to Hot Money, Agent of smoke, diesel fuel and fear.

1:39.3

The war in the Pacific has been over three months.

1:42.2

The Japanese have surrendered.

1:43.9

The Dutch, Indonesia's

1:45.6

centuries old rulers, are scrambling to return. But Indonesians have other ideas. They don't

1:52.0

want to crawl back from war to the yoke of European colonialism. They crave independence,

1:57.4

a republic. That's at the top level. On the streets, things are muckier.

...

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