12 Facts About Ibnu Sutowo

Ibnu Sutowo was an Indonesian army officer, Cabinet Minister and former head of the Indonesian oil and gas producer Pertamina.

Ibnu Sutowo's father had been a regency head near the city of Semarang in Central Java.

In 1945, Ibnu Sutowo was appointed a combined staff and medical officer of the republican army fighting the Dutch for the Palembang region's oil fields and plantations, and once Indonesia's independence was secured in 1949, he worked in the region's civilian health service whilst remaining in active army duty.

Ibnu Sutowo was appointed head of the South Sumatra's Sriwijaya Division in 1955, a division which earned much revenue for the army during the independence struggle by smuggling vast quantities of rubber, tea, pepper and coffee to Singapore.

Ibnu Sutowo returned to Palembang to talk his former troops out of joining the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia in Sumatra and Permesta in Sulawesi.

Ibnu Sutowo found common cause with the Japanese Indonesia hand Shigetada Nishijima, who began negotiations that year and signed a major agreement in 1960.

In 1965, Ibnu Sutowo formed a small clique with Alamsyah Ratu Perwiranegara and Adam Malik, working to quietly undermine Sukarno's legitimacy among oil financiers and lay the groundwork to replace Sukarno with the military general Suharto.

Ibnu Sutowo served as Minister of Mines, Oil, and Natural Gas in Suharto's "New Order" emergency cabinets of 1966.

The dispute included a $2.5 million loan from Rappaport's bank to Ibnu Sutowo that had not been repaid.

Ibnu Sutowo was placed under house arrest pending an investigation, before being "dismissed with honour", and in 1978 the attorney general announced he had been found "not involved" in criminal activity.

Ibnu Sutowo argued the Pertamina's financial "crisis" had been "manufactured" solely as a means to oust him.

Ibnu Sutowo died on 12 January 2001 at Pertamina Central Hospital in Jakarta.