AGO Hails New Ruling On Rp 1.2t Owed by Tommy Suharto

Jakarta Globe, Heru Andriyanto | March 09, 2011

Related articles

• Tommy Suharto’s Bali Resort Adds On a Waterpark
• Suharto’s Family Marks 1,000 Days Since Indonesian Strongman’s Passing
• Tommy Says He Would Consider Presidential Run
• Talk of President Tommy Draws Scorn
• Tommy Suharto Courted to Run for President

The Attorney General’s Office announced on Wednesday that it had won a court review allowing it to reclaim Rp 1.2 trillion ($136.8 million) from the youngest son of former President Suharto.

Prosecutor Cahyaning Nurati said the funds in question were in accounts at Bank Mandiri under the name of Timor Putra Nasional, the failed carmaker owned by Suharto’s son, Hutomo Mandala Putra, also known as Tommy.

She said that while the Supreme Court had previously ruled in favor of Tommy over the disputed funds, a case review mounted by the AGO on behalf of the Ministry of Finance had gone “in favor of us, the Finance Ministry and Bank Mandiri.”

The dispute stems from the failure of TPN, founded by Tommy while his father was still in office, to pay Rp 4.05 trillion in unpaid import taxes in March 1999.

The company had imported cars from South Korea and rebranded them under the name Timor, marketing them as the “national car.”

The Indonesian Banking Restructuring Agency had initially handled efforts to reclaim the debts but in April 2003 it sold the rights to collect it to a company named Vista Bella Pratama for Rp 444.6 billion. Vista has since been disbanded.

The government ordered state-owned Bank Mandiri to freeze Rp 1.2 trillion in accounts belonging to the carmaker in an attempt to collect the debts after finding out that Vista was actually an affiliate of Humpuss, a company also founded by Tommy.

The South Jakarta District Court ruled in November 2006 that the money belonged to TPN, but the verdict was overturned on appeal the following year.

In August 2008 the Supreme Court overturned the appeal and ordered the bank to release the money. However, the Finance Ministry had already moved the money from Bank Mandiri to a state account earlier that month.

Cahyaning said prosecutors were still battling Tommy in a separate case involving Vista, Humpuss, Mandala Buana Bhakti and TPN, which also concerns unpaid debts.

In another dispute between Tommy and French bank BNP Paribas, Jakarta has intervened by asking the bank to freeze 36 million euros ($50 million) belonging to Tommy, alleging the funds came from illegal sources.

The account was previously frozen by a court in the British dependency of Guernsey at the request of the Indonesian government, but in January 2009 a Guernsey court decided to lift the freeze on the funds because Jakarta had failed to provide any evidence that Tommy was involved in corruption.

“The money that we won in the case review in Indonesia amounts to Rp 1.2 trillion — more than the amount we lost in BNP Paribas,” Cahyaning said.