by Andreas Harsono, Special to CorpWatch
February 15th, 2008
Former Indonesian ruler Suharto died last month a very wealthy man. In 1999, a year after he stepped down as Indonesia's second president, Time magazine reported his wealth at US$15 billion.
"Not bad for a man whose presidential salary was $1,764 a month when he left office," the magazine reported.
And not bad for a peasant boy born in 1921 in Kemusuk, a small Javanese village, during Dutch colonial control. Suharto's route to power and wealth was through the military. In 1954, he took a new job in Semarang, on the north coast of Java, only a three-hour drive from his military base in Jogjakarta. It thrust the 33-year-old Javanese officer into a totally different world.
Before the 1954 promotion, Suharto had been a field commander. Now, as head of the Diponegoro military command in Semarang, his immediate job was not to lead military operations, but to feed the thousands of troops under him. His new division consisted of an assortment of thugs and soldiers, bandits and militias. And like most post-independence armies, it was poorly funded.
If Suharto was to succeed in the new Indonesia that was emerging after World War II, he would have to find ways to keep the army in food and equipment. He looked to the example of his wife, Siti Hartinah. Although she came from Javanese aristocracy, she was supporting the family, which already had three young children, with the small garment trade she had started.
Suharto, too, turned to business -- mainly smuggling such consumer goods as sugar and rice between Singapore and Java. He defended running a business out of the army as essential to feeding his men.
Key to his operations from the start were two men who would remain his business associates for almost half a century. Suharto's tie to Liem Sioe Liong, a Fujian-born Chinese merchant who had migrated to Java in 1938, was to become one of the most important alliances in his New Order regime. Suharto also befriended sportsman-cum-businessman Bob Hasan, whose godfather was an army general.
The relationships were mutually beneficial. Suharto used his troops and position to protect the lucrative smuggling; Liem and Hasan helped supply the troops and provide Suharto with business opportunities.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14941 
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