'Time' magazine puts Soehartos' wealth at $15b
'Time' magazine puts Soehartos' wealth at $15b
JAKARTA (JP): United States news magazine Time discloses in
its latest weekly issue that former Indonesian president Soeharto
and his children have amassed a US$15 billion fortune during his
32 years of rule.
"That includes $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 (May 21) in 1998,"
said Time Inc. Asia, the publisher of the magazine, in a press
release on Sunday, the eve of its circulation.
Time's cover story titled Suharto Inc. capped what the
magazine claims to be the most comprehensive, four-month
investigation of the Soeharto family wealth involving hundreds of
interviews by its correspondents in 11 countries.
President B.J. Habibie ordered an official probe of Soeharto's
assets suspected of being accumulated through corruption,
collusion and nepotism but little headway has thus far been made
by Attorney General Andi M. Ghalib.
Soeharto asserted in a private television interview recently
that he did not have a single cent in foreign banks and he
challenged the government and the general public to trace
whatever wealth he possessed overseas.
Time reported the Soeharto family's $15 billion wealth
consisted of cash, shares, corporate assets, real estate, jewelry
and fine arts.
In the 32 years Soeharto was in power, more than $73 billion
in revenues and assets passed through his and his family's hands,
mainly from mining, timber and petroleum but these holdings have
been reduced over the years by mismanagement and Indonesia's
financial crisis, the report said.
The weekly said the Soeharto family controlled some 3.6
million hectares of real estate and owned shares in at least 564
Indonesian companies and its overseas interests which included
hundreds of companies from the U.S. to Uzbekistan and from the
Netherlands to Nigeria.
Time also uncovered a number of the Soeharto children's
personal holdings, including a 50 percent share in a $4 million
yacht moored outside Darwin, a 75 percent stake in a golf course
in Ascot, England, an $8 million penthouse in Singapore and a $12
million mansion in an exclusive neighborhood of Los Angeles.
"The family's combined fleet of planes included until recently
a DC-10, a Boeing-737, a Canadian Challenger 601 and a BAC-111
that an aviation expert believes once belonged to the Royal
Squadron of Queen Elizabeth II," the magazine added.
The weekly quoted a former business associate of the Soeharto
family as alleging that the Soeharto children skipped tax
payments of $2.5 to $10 billion on commissions alone.