Lilybank Reported Sold Again

But Nothing Has Changed

- Murray Horton

The tawdry saga of Tommy Suharto’s Lilybank Lodge (in the Mackenzie Country) has engrossed Watchdog readers, and the wider public, for a decade now. Things went pear shaped for the murderous and corrupt Suharto dictatorship in 1998, when the more than three decades of terror and kleptocracy were ended by a popular uprising. Tommy, the most high profile of the billionaire Suharto children, decided he had more pressing priorities and sold Lilybank for the very reasonable sum of $1 to his Singaporean business partner, Alan Poh.

Funnily enough, this 1999 sale raised enormous suspicion that it was simply a manoeuvre to park Lilybank with a trusted mate, to put the asset out of reach of Indonesian and New Zealand investigators. The media and leading politicians shared our suspicions about this. At the end of 2000 it was reported that Lilybank had been sold to unidentified North Americans, for several million dollars. Subsequent inquiries with the resort’s lawyer established that the sale had, in fact, fallen through.

In early 2002 it was being marketed online for $7.2 million plus GST (the original asking price had been $9 million). In April 2002 it was reported to have been sold, for an undisclosed price, to an unidentified "Auckland-based property developer" (Press, 20/4/02). The National Business Review reported that "the new owner is considering refurbishing the lodge and operating it as a luxury tourist lodge as originally intended" (19/4/02; "Developer buys Suharto lodge", Chris Hutching. This same story quotes from Watchdog 99’s analysis {April 2002} of the Overseas Investment Commission’s Lilybank file. We believe this to be the first time that the NBR has ever brought itself to utter the name "CAFCA". We had been reliably informed that any publication of our name would bring the editor out in a major attack of spots. Red ones, presumably).

However, checks with those in a position to know established that any such sale must have fallen through, because there has been no change in Lilybank’s ownership. It remains in the hands of Alan Poh, the $1 man. And by July it was being advertised on the Internet again, for $6-7 million.

Mention of mysterious "Auckland-based property developers" reminds us of the fact that, in late 2000, we were rung by a mysterious Auckland capitalist who said that "we" (never identified) had been offered Lilybank for $5 million and he wanted to know if "we" bought it, would the money go straight to Tommy and, more pragmatically, would "we" be in the gun under laws covering the seizure of the proceeds of crime? The same fellow told the New Zealand Herald (29/11/00): "We were offered it on a plate but the whole thing sounded like a can of worms. It was a bit like being offered a VCR in a hotel for $50". The question that he asked is a valid one – will the money from any sale go straight to Tommy? Unfortunately we have no way of knowing.

Tommy Suharto: Murderer

But Tommy has other things on his mind right now. In 2000 he became the first and only member of the Suhartos to ever be convicted of anything and was sentenced to 18 months prison for a multi-million dollar land scam. He was having none of that and promptly shot through. Ironically, whilst he was underground, he was acquitted on appeal, a decision that shocked (but didn’t surprise) the nation and the world. Tommy was a busy boy during his more than a year on the run – former President Habibie named him as responsible for a series of terrorist bombings that killed scores of people. Plus he was accused of procuring the murder of the judge who had sentenced him to prison. In late 2001 Tommy was recaptured and finally went to prison (where his conditions are befitting the billionaire son of the former dictator). He was charged with four offences, including the murder of the judge and weapons possession. In July 2002, after a four month trial, he was found guilty on all charges and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He could have got the death penalty, so it’s a pretty light sentence for the murder of a judge - the two hitmen that he hired were convicted, in a separate trial, and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Jakarta Post editorialisd: "This huge disparity was enough to raise immediate suspicions of a conspiracy between the judges and Tommy’s defence lawyers, either for the judges’ material gain or personal safety. Judge Syafiuddin’s killing, after all, must have served as a strong warning to other judges" (quoted in Philippine Daily Inquirer, 28/7/02). Human rights activists were outraged, saying that he should have got 20 years minimum or a life sentence. He has never been charged in connection with the bombings.

So Tommy’s now a convicted murderer – what a fine advertisement for New Zealand’s open door foreign investment regime. Mind you he’s been convicted for only one murder – what about the more than one million of his fellow countrymen murdered during the three bloodsoaked decades of the Suharto dictatorship? When will they get justice?

NZ Government Offer Still Stands

Back in 2000 CAFCA and the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign (IHRC) jointly launched a campaign calling for an investigation into, and the seizure of, the New Zealand assets of the Suharto family and cronies. To our pleasant surprise, the Government took this up, with some alacrity. But it has stalled, particularly since Megawati Sukarnoputri became Indonesia’s President. IHRC’s Maire Leadbeater wrote to Phil Goff, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, to find out what has happened. He replied: "You will recall that, in February 2001, the New Zealand government facilitated a visit to New Zealand by representatives of the Indonesian Attorney General. They were on a factfinding mission to coordinate with New Zealand lawyers about suspected assets of Tommy Suharto in New Zealand and to learn more about the New Zealand civil and criminal legal frameworks for investigation and recovery of any such assets. We encouraged the Attorney General’s representatives to provide the New Zealand authorities with any information that might substantiate claims that Alan Poh was acting on behalf of Tommy Suharto when Mr Poh purchased Lilybank Station. No such information has been received to date.

"When I met the new Indonesian Attorney General, MA Rachman, in early March (2002) I asked whether further New Zealand assistance was required in relation to possible Suharto family assets in New Zealand. The Attorney General advised that Tommy Suharto was now facing murder and possession of weapons charges but that Indonesia would only need to request assistance from New Zealand if further corruption charges were pursued, including against former President Suharto" (letter from Phil Goff to IHRC, undated, 2002).

It is worth reiterating that our campaign focused on considerably more than just Tommy Suharto and Lilybank (full details of the NZ assets of the Suharto family and cronies can be found at www.cafca.org.nz Ed.) but that is the one issue that has captured the attention of the media and politicians, both in New Zealand and Indonesia.

Whatever Happened To Suharto’s Rambo (Or Should That Be Dumbo)?

And whatever happened to the wonderful Gerard Olde-Olthof, the manager of Lilybank? He was undoubtedly our secret weapon and the trump card in swinging public opinion markedly against Lilybank and anything to do with Tommy Suharto. His outrageous behaviour towards hunters and trampers, denying them the traditional access that they had enjoyed, had drawn him into innumerable scraps involving huts being burnt down, shots being fired and bums being bared. His equally outrageous treatment of journalists in the late 1990s (when the ever so timid NZ media, sensing that the Suharto dictatorship was doomed, crept out of its hole and started to look critcally at their presence in NZ) ensured the enmity of the press. You’ll find all of this in Watchdog issues from that period. Well, Olde-Olthof vanished from public view when Lilybank was sold for $1, in 1999.

But he definitely has not been forgotten. Before his spectacular career as Lilybank manager, Olde-Olthof worked for the Department of Conservation (DOC). His behaviour was no different. In May 2002 a Christchurch judge awarded more than $400,000 damages to a West Coast helicopter company, plus ordered DOC to pay the company’s legal costs (the full bill could come to more than $1 million). The case arose out of the 1990 unjustified seizure of the company’s helicopter and rifle (which effectively put them out of business). And who was the DOC officer responsible for this fiasco? You guessed it – Gerard Olde-Olthof. Justice Chisholm variously described him as "plainly irrational, unreasonable and over the top" (Press, 11/5/02; "$1m win over DOC ‘Rambo’"). The judge described an internal DOC report by Olde-Olthof (alleging deer poaching by the company) as "generally founded on rumour and speculation and, in some cases without any foundation at all". He described Olde-Olthof’s own evidence in the witness box as that of a "man of black and white views with few shades of grey. Mr Olde-Olthof believed (DOC) was soft on enforcement and that this attitude needed to be corrected. As far as he was concerned (the company was guilty of poaching) and he was determined to publicly demonstrate that this behaviour would not be tolerated and that poachers ran the risk of having their helicopters seized. He was not going to tolerate any nonsense". The judge also described as "extraordinary" Olde-Olthof’s decision to have police with access to guns on hand when the helicopter was seized: "(This was) yet another indicator that the operation on December 6, 1990, was over the top…In all the circumstances the seizure of the helicopter and the rifle was plainly both irrational and unreasonable". For his part, one the brothers who ran the company described Olde-Olthof as a "Rambo" who had put his family through 12 years of hardship because of a deer poaching allegation based on flawed evidence. And it is absolutely no coincidence that the Press ran this as its front page lead story, nor that it was written by the paper’s former Timaru reporter (he had been the jounalist most spectacularly earbashed and browbeaten by Olde-Olthof during an "interview" about Lilybank).

As you can see, Olde-Olthof was the perfect fellow to be the manager for the favourite son of a dictator. His only problem was that he worked for Tommy in the wrong country. Nobody would have blinked an eye in Indonesia.


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Foreign Control Watchdog, P O Box 2258, Christchurch, New Zealand/Aotearoa. August 2002.

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