Suharto Kin Lie Low, Face Risky Future

Former President Suharto and his six children were, in effect, the CEOs of a country that they had turned into a family-held corporation, enabling them to amass one of the world’s greatest fortunes in just three decades.

The children’s greed and deal-making became so blatant in recent years, particularly after the death of their mother, Siti Hartinah, in 1996, that ordinary Indonesians held them up as the symbol of everything they had come to detest about the Suharto reign--corruption, collusion, nepotism.

When riots erupted in Jakarta last week, it surprised no one that some of the first targets of unruly mobs were businesses owned by the Suharto clan, including banks and office buildings. Had their homes on Cendana Street not been guarded by tanks and troops, they might well have been burned down too.

What happens to Suharto’s three sons and three daughters--all in their 30s and 40s--now that their father has been forced to resign after 32 years in office is far from clear. Their profile has been so low in recent weeks that it is not publicly known whether they are in seclusion here or have fled to Europe and the United States, as has been rumored.

Gen. Wiranto, Indonesia’s defense chief, issued a stern warning before the 76-year-old Suharto resigned: The armed forces will, he said, continue to protect Suharto and his family.

This was probably an admonition that needed saying in a country where emotions against the Suhartos run high and the children are held up to even more public ridicule than their father.

Although the children won’t have to worry about paying the utility bill--the family fortune is estimated at $40 billion--it seems evident that their freewheeling days are over and that their empires, if not their savings accounts, are at risk.

Indonesians, triumphant in ousting their longtime strongman via student-led protests, are unlikely to continue patronizing Suharto family businesses. And Indonesia’s new president, B. J. Habibie, 61, can hardly get off on the right foot with foreign investors and the International Monetary Fund if he continues to patronize the Suharto children with sweetheart business deals that sucked billions of dollars from the now-depleted national treasury.

The children have always denied any wrongdoing, saying they earned their fortunes with hard work and competitive bidding. And they scoffed when the IMF arrived with its $43-billion bailout package late last year--and a demand that the monopolies held by the children and Suharto cronies be dismantled.

“Don’t be concerned,” youngest son Hutomo Mandala Putra, 36, said in January as he stepped from his royal blue Rolls-Royce and into the headquarters of the national car project he owns.

“We give our best to the nation,” he said that day, in a rare news conference. “If we were only thinking of ourselves, of our family, we wouldn’t still be involved in business. But because we see ourselves as children of the nation, who give added value to the nation, we continue to be involved in business.”

He might have mentioned the family’s involvement in politics too, in addition to its ownership of 1,000 companies.

Last year, four of Suharto’s children were members of Indonesia’s quasi-parliament, the People’s Consultative Assembly. So was one of Suharto’s daughters-in-law and Suharto’s half brother. Daughter Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana, known as Tutut, 49, is minister of welfare; a son-in-law is a three-star general who runs the presidential guard.

How obvious is the Suharto wealth? Even casual visitors get a clue. The international airport they arrive at was built by son Bambang Trihatmodjo, 45. The bank they exchange money at is one-third owned by a son and daughter. The clove cigarette they light is owned by Hutomo, known as Tommy. The taxi they take to Jakarta is from a company owned by Tutut, and a portion of the expressway toll the driver pays goes to Tutut, who built the roadway.

In Jakarta, they might stay at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. It’s one of Bambang’s properties. Or shop at the 170-store Plaza Indonesia mall, another Bambang holding.

It is one of the ironies of his rule that the president himself did not seem to care much about money. Suharto lived in a modest home. He dressed as a common man. In fact, by all accounts, he seemed to think that he was only fulfilling a father’s duty in providing his children with secure lives.