Dear friends:
Until several months ago, the Astra Group was one of the largest producers of Nike shoes in Indonesia.
When the Oregonian newspaper asked Nike's Labor Practices chief, Dusty Kidd, about the company's association with the most reviled Suharto crony, he replied, "That's the way it works in Indonesia."
Astra "inherited" the claims of Cicih Sukaesih and 23 other workers dismissed from a factory Astra took over. After the Indonesian Supreme Court ruled in the workers favor, Hasan would only give the workers about 15% of the back pay due to them (total owed: about $65,000 -- six years' lost pay times 24 workers).
At the time of the "settlement", the billionaire was personally contributing over $22,000 a month to Indonesia's wrestling federation. Did he learn sports-sponsorship image enhancement from Nike, one wonders? Jeff B.
excerpt:
...he enjoyed a virtual monopoly over one of the most profitable sectors of the Indonesian economy
Associated Press March 28, 2000
Indonesia Prosecutors Arrest Timber Tycoon Bob Hasan
JAKARTA (AP)--State prosecutors arrested on Tuesday a former economic minister and close associate of ex-President Suharto as part of a wide-ranging corruption probe.
"I have been named a suspect," Mohamad "Bob" Hasan told journalists after being grilled for six hours at the attorney general's office in central Jakarta.
A spokesman for the attorney general's office confirmed that Hasan was being investigated over alleged financial wrongdoings related to a project of aerial mapping of possible forestry concessions.
"He has been detained for 20 days," said the spokesman, Suhandoyo.
The arrest is part of Attorney General Marzuki Darusman's ongoing campaign against high-level corruption during Suharto's 32-year reign and the 17-month term of B.J. Habibie, his successor as head of state.
Darusman was named attorney general when Abdurrahman Wahid, Indonesia's first freely elected president in four decades, assumed office last October.
Hasan, a former trade and industry minister, has been questioned several times since Suharto's ouster amid pro-democracy protests and riots two years ago. Suharto left behind a legacy of endemic corruption and nepotism.
Suharto himself is scheduled to be questioned on Thursday on unrelated charges of misusing funds belonging to several charitable foundations.
The former autocrat has repeatedly denied accusations that he illegally enriched himself, his family and cronies. His lawyers and children have claimed he is too sick to face questioning.
But Darusman said a team of state doctors had carried out extensive medical examinations of Suharto and had cleared him for questioning.
Hasan, a timber tycoon and Suharto's longtime golfing buddy, amassed a personal fortune during Suharto's autocratic rule, when he enjoyed a virtual monopoly over one of the most profitable sectors of the Indonesian economy.
He is one of the largest single debtors of the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency - a state agency set up to revive Indonesia's graft-ridden banking system.
The agency says he amassed debts of more than $710 million.