Government under pressure to follow up 'Time' report

Government under pressure to follow up 'Time' report

JAKARTA (JP): The pressure increased on Tuesday for President
B.J. Habibie's administration to follow up on Time magazine's
report on the alleged corruption of former president Soeharto and
his family and start a serious investigation of its own.

National Mandate Party (PAN) chairman Amien Rais, Indonesian
Corruption Watch (ICW) executives Teten Masduki and Bambang
Widjojanto, and even Golkar Party chairman Akbar Tandjung urged
the government, particularly Attorney General Andi M. Ghalib, to
immediately conduct an in-depth investigation on the report
published recently in the globally circulated weekly.

They all expressed the belief that the front page story titled
"Soeharto Inc.", which ran into 14 pages in the latest edition of
the New York-based magazine, was trustworthy and reliable.

"Therefore, if any of Soeharto's lawyers say that the report
is just for fun, I think even the chicken will giggle," Amien
told reporters in the West Java capital of Bandung. He was
referring to a chicken jokingly presented to the attorney general
last year by students, and a recent report of Soeharto laughing
in reaction to Amien's earlier comments.

He said he would do his best to meet Habibie to ask him to
conduct a real follow-up on the report.

"For such a crystal-clear case like this one, I will no longer
need to meet the attorney general to ask for a follow-up. I'll
try amid my bustling schedule to meet Habibie," Amien told
participants of the Bandung Journalists Discussion Forum.

But he asked that Ghalib's office be pro-active in digging out
more information from the report before lodging the case with the
court.

"I personally don't have a grievance with Pak Harto, but the
people are waiting for the legal progress of this case. So name
him (Soeharto) a suspect, impose house arrest on him, and bring
him to court. That's all," Amien said.

In its report, Time claimed that the Soeharto family fortune,
amassed during the authoritarian leader's 32-year rule, was
currently worth US$15 billion.

The amount included $9 billion in cash that was transferred
from a bank in Switzerland to another, presumably safer, bank in
Austria shortly after Soeharto was forced from office on May 21,
1998, the report said.

According to Akbar, Ghalib's office should not ignore the
report.

"The Attorney General's Office should respond to the story
seriously," the former state secretary in Habibie's cabinet was
quoted by Antara as saying.

"If we don't believe the story, perhaps we should take other
steps," Akbar said, without elaborating.

In a statement made available to The Jakarta Post, Teten and
Bambang of ICW insisted that the report was not a subject to be
debated, but that Ghalib should give a concrete response by
immediately checking the claims with Soeharto.

ICW said that if the government was still reluctant to conduct
a corruption investigation, the House of Representatives (DPR)
should ask Habibie to dismiss Ghalib from his current post.

Separately, head of the United Development Party (PPP) faction
at the House, Zarkasih Nur, said his party would invite the
editor-in-chief of the magazine to give details of the report on
Soeharto's wealth to the House.

"We'll send an invitation to the editor-in-chief of Time
magazine in New York. We hope that they will accept our
invitation," Zarkasih said.

The report, which the magazine claimed was based on an
intensive four-month investigation, has immediately become a top
story for almost all print and broadcast media across the
country.

According to Amien, certain parties have blocked the
distribution of the magazine in the country.

"It's not easy to find the Time edition here. I got copies of
the report faxed by a friend of mine abroad," Amien said,
displaying the copies.

Many subscribers had not yet received their copies on Tuesday,
when the magazine usually arrives. (emf/43)