Indonesia: A Tycoon Under Siege

There was a time when Salim Group, one of Southeast Asia's largest conglomerates, had everything. Its founder, Liem Sioe Liong, a Chinese immigrant to Indonesia, worked in his uncle's peanut oil shop in a backwater town, scraping together the savings to start a business. Along the way, he changed his name to the Indonesian-sounding Sudono Salim. More important, he befriended a hugely ambitious army officer named Suharto. After Suharto took over as President in 1966, he rewarded Liem with lucrative franchises in banking, flour milling, and telecom. By 1997, Salim Group had $20 billion in assets and some 500 companies. Liem was not just big among the ranks of Southeast Asia's ethnic-Chinese tycoons. He was gargantuan.

A year later, Liem has fled Jakarta for the safety of Los Angeles, far from the rioters who burned down his Jakarta home in May during unrest that brought Suharto's resignation. With the old man out of the picture and Suharto in disgrace, Liem's son Anthony Salim is now scrambling to save his family's assets. But the mood in Indonesia has turned savagely against the tycoons who supported the old regime. "They should not expect the treatment they got in the past," says Ginandjar Kartasasmita, Coordinating Minister for Finance, Economy & Industry in the new government of President B.J. Habibie.