By Xinhua
Jakarta : Former Indonesian president Soeharto may take legal actions to seize the assets of the Indonesian subsidiary of the American magazine Time if it fails to pay the damages as ordered by the Supreme Court, his lawyer said Monday.
The Supreme Court has ordered Time Inc. and its six editors to pay Indonesia’s longest-serving president one trillion rupiah (about $108 million) in damages over a 1999 report of the alleged ill-gotten wealth of his family.
“If Time refuses to pay, there are coercive measures to seize the assets of the defendants,” lawyer Muhammad Assegaf was quoted by leading news website detik.com as saying.
“But we will only seize their assets in Indonesia only.”
Soeharto had ruled Indonesia for 32 years before he resigned in May 1998 amid nationwide protests against his corrupt, military-backed regime.