Suharto

Country: Indonesia
Ruled: 1967-1998
Deposed: Popular uprising
Exiled: Indonesia
Wealth:, $15 – $35 billion

In May 1999, Time magazine estimated Indonesia dictator Suharto’s fortune at US$15 billion in cash, shares, property, jewellery and art and claimed he had US$9 billion stashed in Austrian banks. This wealth had been amassed from lucrative monopolies granted to his family. Transparency International more than doubled that estimate to $35 billion in 2004 when it crowned Indonesia’s long-lasting ruler as the world’s most corrupt leader.

Yet Indonesia’s courts cleared him on corruption charges and he received a state funeral when he died in 2008. Suharto was also accused of widespread human rights abuses during his reign, for which he was never brought to account. He was also responsible for the invasion of East Timor in 1985 and the massacre of up to half-a-million Communists after the failed coup of 1965.