Dewi Sukarno faces tax penalties

Dewi Sukarno faces tax penalties

Associated Press, Tokyo

Japanese tax officials have ordered Indonesia's former first lady to pay taxes on 130 million yen (US$1.1 million) in income she allegedly failed to report, newspapers said Wednesday.

Tax investigators discovered that Ratna Sari Dewi Sukarno, the Japanese widow of Indonesia's founding President Sukarno, failed to report income she earned from 1999 to 2001, the Nihon Keizai newspaper and several other media reports said.

The reports said she owed 50 million yen ($430,000) in taxes.

Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau spokeswoman Yuka Sunami refused to confirm the reports, citing privacy reasons.

The Nihon Keizai said the tax bureau concluded that Dewi deliberately hid her earnings from speeches, parties and other events, while reporting her private travel and living expenses as tax deductible office-related expenses.

Her Tokyo-based office was also suspected of having evaded taxable sales income, Kyodo News agency reported.

A representative for her office, Yasuo Asakura, declined to comment on the charges. He said Dewi, currently in Europe, was not available for comment.

Dewi is a former Japanese showgirl who became the Indonesian leader's fourth wife and accompanied him in the days before his death in 1970. Now in her 60s, she is a television celebrity in Japan - where she is known as Madame Dewi - and regularly appears on talk shows.