Word: suharto
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Those billions are just part of the Suharto wealth. Though the Asian financial crisis has trimmed the family empire considerably, the former President and his children retain a sizable fortune. TIME correspondents found indications that at least $73 billion passed through the family's hands between 1966 and last year. Evidence indicates that Suharto and his six children still have a conservatively estimated $15 billion in cash, shares, corporate assets, real estate, jewelry and fine art. The treasure was accumulated over three decades from a skein of companies and monopolies dominating vast sectors of the country's economic activity--from...
When TIME published its 14-page report in Asia last week, it touched off shock waves. Suharto denies he has any bank deposits abroad and insists that his wealth amounts to just 46.9 acres of land, plus $2.4 million in savings, and he went on television on Friday to tell the nation he has done nothing wrong. His lawyers informed TIME that he intended to file suit for "false" charges that "defamed and humiliated" him. But an avid public savored details confirming suspicions of corruption and private profiteering that have swirled around the Suhartos for decades. On Friday, protesters demanding...
Indonesians clearly deserve to know if their former ruler used his political power to enrich his family. According to TIME's investigation, the six Suharto offspring have significant equity in at least 564 companies, and their overseas interests include hundreds of other firms, scattered from the U.S. to Uzbekistan and Nigeria. The Suhartos also possess plenty of the trappings of wealth. In addition to a $4 million hunting ranch in New Zealand and a half share in a $4 million yacht moored in Australia, youngest son Hutomo Mandala Putra (nicknamed "Tommy") owns a 75% stake in an 18-hole golf...
There seems to be little doubt that the family grew wealthy at the expense of the nation. Suharto laid the foundation by establishing an intricate nationwide system of patronage that kept him in power for 32 years. His children, in turn, parlayed their ties to the presidency into the role of middlemen for government purchases and sales of oil products, plastics, arms, airplane parts and petrochemicals. They held monopolies on the distribution and import of major commodities. They obtained low-interest loans by colluding with or even strong-arming state bankers. Subarjo Joyosumarto, managing director of Bank Indonesia, describes...
During his long reign, Suharto led an outwardly modest life. Behind the facade, however, he showed an appetite for making money. In the 1950s, he was allegedly involved in sugar smuggling that may have cost him command of an army division during a 1959 anticorruption drive. Suharto asserts that he bartered sugar for rice to ease a local food shortage and did not benefit personally, but he was transferred to a less influential position at the army staff college...