World Bank Cracks Down on Indonesian Oilmen

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World Bank Cracks Down On Indonesian Oilmen

dollars in loans following its collapse, have ensured its INDONESIA operation furthers their own interests especially the interest on the Indonesian foreign debt. A spokesman for the u.S. Agency for International Development, the governmental agency representing the · General Ibnu Sutowo, the former president-director of u.S. at the April 5 IGGI meeting, has said the u.S. will the Indonesian oil company, Pertamina, and a key figure demand the scraping of Indonesia's capital-intensive in the Indonesian pro-development faction, has been put development programs, and increased efforts to finance under house arrest. Although no formal charges have development though the "mobilization of internal been brought against him, Indonesian Secretary of State resources," a polite phrase for internal austerity and Sudharmono told reporters that his arrest is linked to increased income taxes. ongoing investigations into allegedly illegal business Th,! take over of Pertamina by supporters of the practices involving the chartering of a tanker fleet. As World Bank is central to forcing Indonesian many as 30 other Pertamina officials have reportedly capitulation- important not merely to secure looting been arrested as well. rights, but to undermine the use of Indonesian oil to Sutowo's arrest coincides with the April 5 meeting of solidify anti-austerity allies among European and the World Bank's Inter· Governmental Group on In Japanese industrialists. donesia (lGGI) , the aid consortium that oversees In Already Japanese industrial consumers are worried donesia's 12 billion foreign debt. It also follows rumors over cutbacks in Indonesian crude shipments from circulating among European oil industry circiles that the Pertamipa. According to reports in the March 28 Asahi Carter Administration is planning military coups among Evening News, a major Japanese daily, the cutbacks are "fringe" OPEC countries - Indonesia is one. Furthering due to increased U.S. purchases. Among those said to be this coup scenario, Lewis Simons, a correspondent for arrested in Indonesia are Tirto Utomo, Pertamina's the Washington Post known to have links to the CIA, has former legal advisor and John Nizar, former top Sutowo run a series of articles telling of widespread disaffection advisor, both of wh.om were instrumental in dealing with among the Indonesian population, including the military, Japanese industrialists. because of "widespread corruption" that reaches all the Meanwhile Lewis Simons of the Washington Post, way up to President Suharto's own family. kicked out of India and Bangledesh last year, tells his While chief of Pertamina, Sutowo came into sharp readers that Indonesian corruption involves even Pres conflict with the IMF because of his oil-for-technology ident Suharto. It is said that Suharto has moved against deals with powerful but oil-hungry European and .. Sutowo in part because of such allegations. Suharto has Japanese industrialists during the early 1970s. Being a appointed a three-man team to investigate Sutowo's major proponent for a capital-intensive development involvement in over $2 billion in tanker charters with strategy, he was and still is at odds with the u.S. trained Geneva-based tanker charterer Bruce Rappaport. The "�echnocrats" in the government's economic ministries Indonesian government has been receiving backing from who are loyal to the World Bank's labor-intensive rural its creditors in its case against Rappaport, who they development schemes. Sutowo was dismissed from his claim defrauded the Indonesian government with over position last year only after the World Bank and IMF priced charters which the government claims it is not threatened to cut off all aid to Indonesia. Since his dis obligated to honor. The tankers were chartered in the missal and the subsequent handing over of the company 1972-74 period, at the height of Sutowo's oil-for-tech to the tutelage of technocrats, the IMF and New York nology wheeling and dealing in an effort to build an in banks who "bailed out" the company with over a billion dependent national tanker fleet.

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