Aburizal Bakrie

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Aburizal Bakrie is an Indonesian entrepreneur and politician. According to Forbes, Bakrie and his family are the sixth richest in Indonesia with a net worth of $1.2 billion.^[1]

1 Family business
2 Public offices
3 Sidoarjo mud flow
4 References
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Family business

Bakrie was born in Jakarta on November 15, 1946. He attended the Bandung Institute of Technology where he obtained a degree in electrical engineering in 1973. In 1972 he entered the family business PT Bakrie & Brothers Tbk that had been founded by his father Ahmad Bakri; the conglomerate had prospered during the Soeharto regime.^[2] The Bakrie group conducts business in agriculture, real estate, trade, shipping, banking, insurance, media, manufacturing, construction, and mining. Aburizal Bakrie is the the oldest of four siblings and was the chairman of the family enterprise from 1999 to 2004. The Bakrie conglomerate went into debt after the 1998 Asian economic crisis and survived only after a refinancing process in 2000.^[3] Thus the Bakrie family was able to maintain control over the conglomerate.

[edit] Public offices

In 2004 Bakrie was named to be the chief economic minister of Indonesia.^[4] This appointment by a president who planned to fight corruption was viewed with some reservation.^[5] Subsequently Aburizal Bakrie has been blamed for poor economic development and business nepotism. ^[6] After a reshuffling of the cabinet in 2005, he became the Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare.

Previous positions included the presidency of the ASEAN Business Forum for two consecutive terms from 1991 to 1995, and the chairmanship of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) for two consecutive terms from 1994 to 2004.^[4] As a member of the Golkar party Bakrie competed unsuccessfully as a candidate for the presidency in 2004.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Sidoarjo mud flow

Main article: Sidoarjo mud flow

In May 2006 a drilling hole at Porong, Sidoarjo that was conducted without protective casings by PT Lapindo Brantas, a mining company of the Bakrie conglomerate, started a continuous release of hot mud, a possible mud volcano, that made people homeless and threatens the local economy in East Java. While officially not running the family business since joining the cabinet, Bakrie received protests by environmentalists in view of the damage done by the company of his family.^[7] The sale of Lapindo Brantas for $ 2 to an off-shore company in September 2006 was seen as an attempt to reduce financial exposure for the Bakrie family.^[8]