Bakrie squirms as crisis slams Indonesia

Source: AFP

JAKARTA (AFP) — Just months ago he was the undisputed king of Indonesia's tycoons, but now powerful Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie is struggling to hold together an empire crumbling amid the global credit crunch.

The 62-year-old billionaire, a key financier of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's 2004 election campaign, is fast losing his once-formidable political clout as stocks across his empire plummet, analysts said.

. . .

He has seemed untouchable as the tycoon-businessman with his finger in almost every pie. But now he is answering to the markets as the global economic slump puts the brakes on the spectacular commodities boom that had fueled his family's profits.

His debts have piled up and creditors have started selling shares offered as collateral by holding company Bakrie & Brothers, economists said.

Trading in stocks in six Bakrie-linked companies was controversially suspended in early October after they lost between a quarter and 40 percent of their value in one day amid rumours he was in default.



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Now why this is important. This is the guy who caused the mud volcano in East Java.

In May, 2006 a crack in a Bakrie oil well started a disaster which has not yet ended. The Lusi Mud Volcano has poured out more than 100,000 cubic meters of high sulfuric hot mud each day. So far it has displaced more than 50,000 people, eleven villages, submerged homes, factories and schools.

The sludge the volcano is spewing is refusing to stay inside the barriers they have erected to guide it. The also built a cement dike around it, but that failed. They then tried to choke it by dropping a bunch of big balls of concrete into the hole. Well that failed.


Now it looks like the Indonesian government is giving up on it. Last week Indonesia's vice president said the government had given up all hope of halting the mud volcano in East Java.


So this article is saying the guy who started it all is going broke. GOOD!