The Indonesian government sought Monday for ex-dictator Suharto and a charity he chaired while in power to hand over 1.4 billion dollars in stolen assets and damages in a civil suit against them. State prosecutor Dachmer Munthe, reading an indictment at the opening hearing, said that Suharto and the Supersemar Scholarship Foundation misused 440 million dollars.
"The first and second defendants (Suharto and the foundation) utilised funds that were gathered... against the aims of the foundation," he said. Munthe said the government was also seeking additional damages of 10 trillion rupiah (one billion dollars).
The prosecutor alleged that the foundation had distributed funds meant to go to needy students to private companies from 1982 to 1993. "If that money can be recovered, there will be more than a thousand people who could obtain scholarships," Munthe added.
The recipients included an airline owned by Suharto's youngest son that went bankrupt, an ailing bank in which the foundation had stakes and paper and pulp companies linked to a close Suharto crony, Muhammad "Bob" Hassan.
At the trial, a group representing former and current recipients of scholarships from the foundation presented a demand to be involved in the lawsuit as plaintiffs, apparently fearing they could be asked to return the funds they received. Judge Wahyono, who is heading the panel of judges hearing the case, accepted the intervention and said a decision would later be made as to the position of the group in the suit.
The civil suit represents apparently revived efforts by the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to bring Suharto to justice, although analysts have been doubtful that the case - resting on evidence decades old - will succeed. A long-running criminal case against Suharto was abandoned in May last year on health grounds, triggering widespread criticism of Yudhoyono.
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