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JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – Indonesian authorities on Friday seized four plots of land belonging to the youngest son of former dictator Suharto as part of efforts to recover money owed to the government since the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998 .
The confiscation was part of the government’s attempts to collect the unpaid debt of PT Timor Putra Nasional, an automaker owned by Hutomo Mandala Putra, also known as Tommy Suharto, after defaulting on loans from state-owned banks in ‘worth $ 2.6 trillion ($ 180.8 million) made during the financial crisis, said Rionald Silaban, head of the finance ministry.
The four plots of land in West Java’s Karawang District total 124 hectares (306 acres), he said in a statement.
A government task force established in April began confiscating the assets of people who were bailed out by central bank funds during the financial crisis. It has so far seized 49 plots of land totaling 520 hectares (1,285 acres) from debtors of a Bank of Indonesia liquidity support fund known as BLBI.
The task force is mandated to recover around 110 trillion rupees ($ 7.7 billion) in defaulted loans through civil proceedings by the end of 2023. Silaban said the land seized would be sold upon open auctions.
Authorities deployed more than 400 police and soldiers to protect task force members as they carried out the confiscation on Friday because they faced “several obstacles” in carrying out the seizure, the statement said. .
Tommy Suharto and his team of lawyers could not be reached immediately for comment.
The 59-year-old former playboy came to symbolize the excesses committed by the Indonesian ruling class during Suharto’s 32 years in power, which ended in 1998 after numerous pro-democracy protests.
An Indonesian court in 2002 sentenced Tommy Suharto to 15 years in prison for paying two contract killers to assassinate a Supreme Court judge who convicted him of corruption, but he was freed in less than four years.
With a reputation for being one of the most corrupt rulers in the world, Suharto and his family are said to have amassed between $ 15 billion and $ 35 billion while he was president.
In November 2018, a court ordered the seizure of a 14-story office building in downtown Jakarta owned by the Suharto family after the Supreme Court ordered a foundation created by the former dictator to pay a fine 4.4 trillion rupees ($ 306 million) to embezzle scholarship funds.
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