Indonesia files civil suit against son of ex-dictator Suharto

A team of prosecutors, led by Lambok David Nainggolan, filed the suit against businessman Hutomo Mandala Putra, better known as Tommmy Suharto, in the South Jakarta district court.

"We're seeking the return of some 500 billion rupiah (53 million dollars) that went missing in the land scam," detik.com online news service quoted Nainggolan as saying.

Along with Tommy, the lawsuit also accuses three other people, including Bedu Amang, the former chief of the National Logistics Agency (BULOG), he said.

The civil suit is part of a deal made by the Indonesian government with a court in Guernsey, United Kingdom, which has frozen millions of euros in a bank account there belonging to Tommy. Tommy is currently appealing a court order on May 23 to extend the freeze.

The younger Suharto, a millionaire playboy who came to symbolize the greed, corruption and unaccountability of his father's 32-year rule, is more recently famous for his battles with the police and courts.

 In 2000, Tommy was sentenced to 18 months in prison in a criminal trial over the land swap scam in 1995 while his father was still in office. Tommy's company, working with BULOG, swapped unusable swamp land for prime government-owned real estate that was then used to build a shopping centre.

Tommy went into hiding for more than a year after the verdict, during which he paid two hit men to kill the Supreme Court justice who had convicted him. Tommy was released from prison in October 2006 after serving just over five of the original 15-year sentence for murder.

While he was in hiding, the Supreme Court inexplicibly overturned his conviction in the land scam case and threw out the fine, which prompted the current civil suit to recover losses to the state.

Last week, Tommy was also questioned as a suspect in a separate multi-million-dollar graft case involving the state-owned clove monopoly agency for the cigarette industry in the 1990s. He has strongly denied any wrongdoing.

Despite being out of power, the Suharto family, which includes five other adult children, remains extremely wealthy and has deep political connections. Prosecutors have been forced to file civil lawsuits to collect money because, as one analyst put it, "the Suhartos are paying to stay out of prison." 

Tommy is the only member of the Suharto clan who has been found guilty and jailed for any offence, even though his family is accused of accumulating as much as 35 billion dollars during Suharto's regime.

On August 9, an Indonesian district court began hearing a civil suit filed by state prosecutors against Suharto to recover 420 million dollars of misdirected state funds allegedly amassed while he was in office and a further 1.1 billion dollars in damages.

The 86-year-old former president, who resigned in disgrace in 1998 amid pro-democracy street demonstrations, faced numerous allegations of corruption during his rule, but in May 2006 prosecutors closed the criminal cases against him, citing his deteriorating health.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was elected on an anti-corruption platform in 2004, but has been criticised for failing to net key figures from the Suharto era.

//Deutsche Presse-Agentur