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The troubled business of Indonesian palm oil magnate Sukanto Tanoto

The entrepreneur bought a building in Munich in 2019 for 350 million euros. The OpenLux survey project, led by 17 newspapers around the world, traces the operation to Luxembourg, Singapore and the Cayman Islands.

The cream-colored building sits right at the junction of Ludwigstrasse and Theresienstrasse in central Munich, Germany. Ludwigstrasse 21 – that’s the building’s name – was built in the 19th century, during the reign of Ludwig I of Bavaria. Today, this 27,000 m2 building houses the prestigious offices of various multinationals.

On September 3, 2019, real estate and consultancy firm KanAm announced that Ludwigstrasse 21 and four other buildings in the same complex had been sold to Pacific Eagle. His press release mentions his client as “a family business from Singapore ”. “KanAm has acted as an advisor to Pacific Eagle in the search for properties that may be suitable for them”, Michael Birnbaum, head of communications and sales at KanAm Grund, told the German daily Southgerman newspaper, February 1.

At the end of 2020, a collaborative investigative work of the magazine Time, de l’Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) et de la Southgerman newspaper [dans le cadre du projet OpenLux, lancé par le quotidien français Le Monde avec la collaboration, entre autres, du Soir (Belgique), de La Nación (Argentine), de Piauí (Brésil)] discovered, behind the purchase of this amazing property, the name of the Indonesian palm oil and pulp magnate Sukanto Tanoto. The amount of the transaction would have reached 350 million euros. Various data indicate that it is the most important in the real estate sector in Germany in 2019.

Maira Martini, specialist in anti-corruption legislation at the NGO Transparency International, comments:

It is quite possible that the German authorities do not know the identity of the new owner of the building. Indeed, purchases through shell companies do not necessarily require disclosure of the owner’s name. Compliance with anti-money laundering rules in the non-financial sector in Europe is very low, especially in Germany. ”

The investigation reveals that the transaction was carried out through at least three tax havens: Luxembourg, Singapore and the Cayman Islands.

Three days before the transaction, the companies changed their names

Sukanto Tanoto’s name emerged after OCCRP indexed and analyzed beneficiary registry data

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Mustafa SilahatiRicky FerdiantoLinda TrianitaMartin Young (OCCRP) Hannes Stepputat (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

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The title was first published in April 1971 by PT Grafitti Pers, with the intention of offering the Indonesian public new ways of obtaining information, freedom of analysis and respect for differences of opinion. Step by step,

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