August 17, 2007	Friday	Sha’aban 3, 1428

JAKARTA: The youngest son of former dictator Suharto appeared at the Indonesian attorney general's office on Thursday to be quizzed as a suspect in a multi-million-dollar graft case over a state monopoly he led.

Hutomo “Tommy” Mandala Putra, who headed the country's clove monopoly board in the 1990s, is accused of receiving cash from the central bank intended for farmers and using it for other purposes. “My summons today is over a criminal case of corruption, the misuse of Bank Indonesia liquidity assistance by the executives of the BPPC at the time,” he told journalists shortly before his questioning. But Tommy said that the debt from the bank had been resettled. Suharto and his family are accused of amassing up to $35 billion in corrupt funds during the dictator's rule. The former president stepped down in 1998 amid a severe economic crisis and massive civil unrest. Tommy was freed from prison in October 2006 after serving just a third of a 15-year jail sentence for ordering the murder of a Supreme Court judge who had convicted him of corruption.—AFP