A Jakarta judge recently ruled that former President Suharto is too unwell, physically and mentally, to stand trial on massive corruption charges. The Indonesian government is appealing that ruling. There is no suggestion that he will ever be charged with the litany of human rights abuses (starting with mass murder on a gargantuan scale) committed during his 1960s seizure of power and the 32 years of his bloodstained dictatorship. It appears that he’s done a Pinochet – the Chilean former dictator was ruled to be too unwell to be deported from Britain to Spain to face trial for human rights abuses. Upon arrival home at Santiago Airport, safely surrounded by his goosestepping troops, he dispensed with his wheelchair and miraculously walked again.

As for Tommy, he was charged with a $US11 million property scam involving the State’s main food supply agency. He was convicted and sentenced to 18 months prison, the first time this indignity has ever been visited on a Suharto. But being sentenced and actually spending even one minute in prison are two different things if you’re a billionaire member of Indonesia’s former First Family – he simply refused to go to prison, claiming that he was appealing, despite all his appeals having been rejected. To reinforce the point, he’s gone into hiding. Despite being named by President Wahid as a prime suspect in the murderous Jakarta Stock Exchange bombing, Tommy hasn’t been charged with anything in connection with that.

As for Lilybank, well Tommy officially sold that, in 1999, to his Singaporean business partner, Alan Poh, for the very reasonable price of $1. But Bill Rosenberg’s research at the Companies Office, for his briefing paper for the Indonesian Attorney General (see below) established that, as of October 2000, Tommy was still listed as owning 95% of the holding company that owns Lilybank. Sloppy paperwork perhaps? Or a simple statement of the facts? Also in October, CAFCA was rung by an Auckland capitalist who told us that "we" (never identified) had just been offered Lilybank for the much more realistic price of "around $5 million". "We" didn’t buy it. He was concerned about the ethics of the whole deal and was concerned that if "we" had bought it, would their $5 million have gone straight to Tommy? No prizes for guessing the answer to that. He also had a pragmatic concern – if they’d bought Lilybank, could it be seized later as the proceeds of crime? Hopefully so.