By George J. Aditjondro
The popular demands to investigate the billions of dollars pillaged by former President Suharto from the Indonesian people and state coffers seem to have dwindled. One of the main stumbling blocks is the unwillingness of Suharto's successor, B.J. Habibie, to respect the wishes of the opposition to seriously investigate the wealth of Indonesia's former first family, who, according to Forbes magazine, still own US$4 billion worth of personal wealth, after the worst financial crisis in the country's history.
Many of the approximately 160 Habibie family companies are closely linked with those owned by the Suharto clan and its cronies.
Their overlapping business interests run from Batam Island, Indonesia's free trade island across from Singapore, to Germany, where Habibie spent more than 20 years of his life. Living under Suharto's patronage for two decades, Habibie practised even more blatant nepotism in his official positions than his mentor.
For nearly 20 years, Habibie was head of the Batam Authority, passing on the position to his younger brother, Fanny Habibie, only after Suharto chose Habibie as his running mate for the election in March.
During those years, Batam swarmed with members of the Habibie clan, most prominent among them (Ret.) Major General Sudarsono Darmosuwito, a younger brother-in-law of Habibie, who headed the Batam Island Development Authority (BIDA) 1978-88. After that, Darmosuwito still held a position as adviser to BIDA, stepping down only after Habibie became acting president.
A legacy of the Suharto-Habibie partnership was a contract to supply 50 million cubic metres of sand from Batam to expand Singapore's Changi Airport, awarded to a consortium owned by Tommy Suharto, Yayuk Habibie and the governor of Riau, Suripto, whose province covers Batam Island. This five-year contract, which expires at the turn of the century, has earned the concession holders S$16-17 million a year.
The Technology Assessment and Development Body, (BPPT), which Habibie also headed for two decades, is also blemished by nepotism. Truly Sutrasno, the eldest daughter of Habibie's eldest sister, a psychologist by training, was appointed as deputy head for administrative affairs, in charge of the budget for the entire institution and its sister organisations.
Her catering company supplied most of BPPT's catering needs, while her husband, Mohammad Ridwan Sutrasno, obtained contracts worth tens of millions dollars to repeatedly renovate the BPPT building in central Jakarta.
Truly's younger brother, Askar Subono Mantofani, who had worked at BPPT while still finishing high school, set up his own printing company to fill orders from three state-owned companies directed by Habibie — the aircraft factory (IPTN), the shipyard (PT PAL), and the arms and ammunition factory (PT Pindad).
Askar also supplied chairs, toilets and carpets for IPTN aircraft, while his sister's company supplied IPTN's catering needs.
Truly's and Askar's companies are only two of dozens of the Habibie and Suharto-linked companies involved in IPTN and the nine other strategic industries that were directed by the current president. The two families also had joint ventures in the Natuna Islands natural gas project in the South China Sea, which fell under Habibie's jurisdiction.
In developing Indonesia's nuclear technology, they brought into their fold a company owned by the family of the head of Indonesia's nuclear technology authority, BATAN, Dr Djali Ahimsa. Hence the strong interest in building 12 nuclear reactors in the earthquake-prone Muria Peninsula in Central Java (to be supplied, possibly, by Jabiluka uranium).
Germany is the country where the Habibie clan has its strongest business links, which also benefited the Suharto family. Habibie's youngest sister, Sri Rahayu Fatima Mochdar, also known as Yayuk Habibie, is the agent of a German steel and engineering giant, Ferrostaal.
Two companies controlled by Suharto's middle son, Bambang Trihatmojo, have joint ventures with Ferrostaal. PT Samudra Petrindo Asia is an oil tanker company, and PT Samudra Ferro Engineering is involved in oil refinery engineering.
Using the Indonesian-German business association, Ekonid, Yayuk Habibie lobbied for German economic interests in Jakarta from the private sector, while her elder brother did it from his official position as minister of research and technology.
Assisted by their aunt, the two Habibie sons, Ilham Akbar and Thareq Kemal, who grew up in Germany, have also forged business connections with German companies, under the umbrella of three Habibie family company groups — Repindo Panca, Trimitra Upayatama and Citra Harapan Abadi.
Independently, they have developed their own joint ventures with German companies, including a large heat exchanger factory in East Java, shares in a company that owns the Deutsche Bank building in Jakarta and a growing portfolio in Germany, where they have a branch office in Hamburg.
These German connections go back to 1981, when, as state minister of research and technology, Habibie successfully lobbied for Interatom, a subsidiary of Siemens AG, to construct Indonesia's first full-sized nuclear research reactor, although Interatom quoted much higher costs than its US, Canadian and French competitors.
In 1994, Habibie got Suharto's approval to buy 39 used ships from the former East German navy for US$1.1 billion, more than three times the price agreed by the finance minister and against the wishes of the armed forces commanders, who were left out of the negotiations.
While visiting Germany in October 1994, I heard rumours that Yayuk Habibie had brokered that deal. However, in a phone interview with her at her Perth house on July 27, she denied any involvement in that deal. She admitted, though, that a company owned by her husband, Muchsin Mochdar, received a contract from PT PAL to repair the ships' airconditioners.
Prior to forcing the Indonesian navy to buy used East German ships, Habibie had persuaded Indonesian airlines to buy 15 20-year-old Boeing 737-200 airplanes from the German flag carrier, Lufthansa.
His argument was that the deal could create jobs at the IPTN aircraft factory in Bandung, to repair the planes, and that he was able to get German government loans.
Since Suharto stepped down, Habibie has been reluctant to crack down on the corrupt deals of many state-owned companies with Suharto family companies. One glaring example is the state-owned electric power company, PLN. In July Habibie sacked PLN's director, Djiteng Marsudi, after Marsudi cancelled a deal between PLN and a joint venture of Bambang Trihatmojo with the German engineering firm, Siemens AG.
Marsudi complained in the parliament that several deals between the Suharto family and its German partners had been agreed upon on by Suharto and the German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, during Suharto's visit to Germany in 1995, over his head as PLN director.
Habibie's German lobby has been strengthened by the promotion of the new state secretary, Akbar Tanjung, to the top position in the ruling party, Golkar. Tanjung's family holding company, Marison Nusantara, has overlapping shares and directorships with Indonesia's largest business conglomerate, the Salim Group of Liem Sioe Liong, Suharto's old friend from the 1950s.
Their joint businesses include PT Indomilk, a former joint venture with the Australian Dairy Board; an oil palm plantation in Tanjung's home province, North Sumatra; and a company which sells industrial chemicals made under licence from the Dusseldorf-based company Henkel, with sales reaching US$50 million in 1996.
Germany is also a major market for Indonesian palm oil. Salim has acquired a palm oil refinery in Rosslau, 70 km north of Leipzig, and provided DM70 million to upgrade this under-utilised East German factory.
Meanwhile, the Habibie family are no strangers to Australia and its business and scientific establishment. Yayuk Habibie owns a house and an orange grove in Perth, where one of her children goes to school.
Her niece, Truly Sutrasno, heads COSTAI (Cooperation in Science and Technology between Australia and Indonesia), a joint venture between BPPT and several science and technology agencies in Australia. She may want to pursue her uncle's interests in building nuclear power plants, or to build another national car, Maleo, with the Perth-based company Orbital Engineering.
Members of the Habibie clan have properties near Hamburg, Munich and Braunschweig in Germany, in addition to properties in London, Boston, Singapore and Perth. Yayuk Habibie's six-bedroom house outside Boston was bought in 1991 for US$299,000, according to public records in the US.
As John Howard and Alexander Downer continue to support this transitional regime, we should take its corrupt nature into consideration. Do Australian taxpayers genuinely want to assist the impoverished Indonesian people, or to prop up a corrupt and repressive regime, which still refuses to release its hundreds of political prisoners and withdraw all its troops from the occupied territories of Aceh, East Timor and West Papua?