Tommy Suharto, the most heroically corrupt offspring of the murderous and kleptocratic Suharto dictatorship which plundered and terrorised Indonesia from 1965-98, was a regular fixture in Watchdog throughout the 1990s, courtesy of his ownership of the luxury Lilybank Lodge resort and high country station in the central South Island’s Mackenzie Country. Tommy was the poster boy of precisely who should not be allowed to buy land in New Zealand. CAFCA dined out on Tommy and Lilybank for years and we were almost sorry to see him go – his circumstances changed when Daddy was overthrown in a popular uprising in 1998 and Tommy sold Lilybank to his Singaporean business partner for the highly dubious sum of $1 the following year. Since then, Lilybank has been re-New Zealandised and disappeared from the media headlines that it, and CAFCA, used to regularly command.

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 – 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 were befitting the billionaire son of the former dictator). He was charged with arranging the murder of the judge, fleeing from justice and possessing illegal rifles, handguns, grenades and explosives. He went on trial in 2002.

His 2002 trial “sometimes veered into farce. At one point his lawyer was accused of bribing witnesses in the trial and had to spend two weeks in jail. Tommy himself was brash and sarcastic throughout, calling in sick on several occasions and boasting at one point that he stayed out of jail through ‘coordination with law enforcers’. But (in July 2002), the judges in Jakarta proved that reformasi was still alive by ruling that Tommy had masterminded (Judge) Syafiuddin’s killing, paid $US11,000 to two gunmen and loaned them one of his own pistols to use in the attack (those two were convicted of murder in February 2002 and are serving life sentences)…(On the day of sentencing his lawyers) insisted their client’s stomach cramps and headache had kept him in his comfortable, air conditioned cell – outfitted with a television and a stereo system – and away from the Jakarta courtroom….Such was the reputation of Tommy that observers in the packed, tropical courtroom thought that malingering might actually set him free. They were wrong, as they discovered when the court declared the absent Tommy guilty on all four charges and sentenced him to 15 years in prison.

"…The sentence handed down is considerably softer than the life terms being served by his henchmen. ‘According to any legal logic’, says Frans Hendra Winata, a Jakarta-based legal expert, ‘the mastermind behind the killings has to get a heavier verdict than the executioners’. The court explained its decision with a list of mitigating factors: that Tommy had been depressed, had a family to support, that he was young and was capable of reform…’From a legal point of view, this is good’, says Todung Mulya Lubis, a prominent Jakarta attorney. ‘No one ever imagined in the past that someone like Tommy Suharto could be convicted’" (Time, 5/8/02; "Throwing the Book at a Suharto").

Special Treatment

And that was the last time that Tommy was mentioned in Watchdog (101, December 2002;”Lilybank Finally Sold: From A Kleptocratic Murderer To Common Or Garden Local Capitalists”, by Murray Horton, which can be read online at http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/01/02.htm. Ed.). In the intervening years, his sentence was cut from 15 to ten years (intriguing, as Tommy himself did not appeal either his sentence or conviction). And then, lo and behold, in November 2006, he was released. To quote Time (13/11/06; Milestones): “His early release for good behaviour, while the men who carried out the hit are still serving life terms, has prompted criticism that Indonesia’s wealthy still benefit from special treatment under the country’s justice system”. You could have knocked me down with a feather!