When the end came for Suharto, Indonesia's long-serving President appeared oddly passive. As students and angry mobs took to the streets and soldiers responded with gunfire and tear gas, the five-star general hovered in the background, making few attempts to set things right. When he finally quit a year ago this week, he stood meekly to the side as his successor, B.J. Habibie, took the oath of office. Suharto has hardly been heard from since.

But Indonesia's onetime autocrat has been far busier than most of his countrymen realize. Just after his fall from power there began feverish movements of his personal fortune. In July 1998, reports emerged that a staggering sum of money linked to Indonesia had been shifted from a bank in Switzerland to another in Austria, now considered a safer haven for hush-hush deposits. The transfer caught the attention of the United States Treasury, which tracks such movements, and set in motion diplomatic inquiries in Vienna. Now, as part of a four-month investigation that covered 11 countries, TIME has learned that $9 billion of Suharto money was transferred to a nominee bank account in Austria. Not bad for a man whose presidential salary was $1,764 a month when he left office. (Suharto, for his part, denies he has any bank deposits abroad and insists that his wealth amounts to just 19 hectares of land in Indonesia, plus $2.4 million in savings.)

Those billions are just part of the Suharto wealth. Though the Asian financial crisis has trimmed the family empire considerably, the former President and his children retain a staggering fortune. It was built over three decades from a skein of companies, monopolies and control over vast sectors of economic activity in Indonesia -- from oil exports to humble pilgrims making the yearly visit to Mecca. (They flew on planes leased from companies controlled by Suharto's children.) According to data from the National Land Agency and Properti Indonesia magazine, the Suharto family on its own or through corporate entities controls some 3.6 million hectares of real estate in Indonesia, an area larger than Belgium. That includes 360,000 square feet (100,000 square meters) of prime office space in Jakarta and nearly 40 percent of the province of East Timor.

PROFILES The Suharto Children Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana "Tutut" Bambang Trihatmodjo Hutomo Mandala Putra "Tommy" Sigit Harjoyudanto Siti Hutami Endang Adiningsih "Mamiek" Siti Hediati Hariyadi "Titiek"

Within Indonesia, the six Suharto offspring have significant equity in at least 564 companies, and their overseas interests include hundreds of other firms, scattered from the U.S. to Uzbekistan, Nigeria to Vanuatu. The Suhartos also possess plenty of the trappings of wealth. In addition to a $4 million hunting ranch in New Zealand and a half-share in a $4 million yacht moored outside Darwin, Australia, youngest son Hutomo Mandala Putra (nicknamed Tommy) owns a 75 percent stake in an 18-hole golf course with 22 luxury apartments in Ascot, England. Bambang Trihatmodjo, Suharto's second son, has an $8 million penthouse in Singapore and a $12 million mansion in an exclusive neighborhood of Los Angeles, two doors down from rock star Rod Stewart and just up the street from his brother Sigit Harjoyudanto's $9 million home. Eldest daughter Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana may have sold her Boeing 747-200 jumbo jet, but the family's fleet of planes included, at least until recently, a DC-10, a blue-and-red Boeing 737, a Canadian Challenger 601 and a BAC-111. The latter once belonged to the Royal Squadron of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, according to Dudi Sudibyo, managing editor of Indonesia's Angkasa aerospace magazine.

Neither Suharto nor his six children responded to requests for interviews, though lawyers for the former President and son Bambang asserted that their clients did nothing illegal. "He told me, 'I don't have one cent abroad,' " says Otto Cornelis Kaligis, Suharto's top lawyer. Indeed, no one has proven that the Suhartos broke any laws. Their companies consist mostly of operating entities that turn profits, create jobs and import Western technology. Yet allegations that the former First Family benefited from favoritism, commonly heard in Indonesia since the early 1980s, began to grow louder when the former President resigned. His successor quickly announced an official investigation into such charges. Tommy, the youngest son whose corporate empire at one point included the Lamborghini sports car company, is already in legal jeopardy, facing allegations of defrauding a state agency of $11 million in a real estate deal. The South Jakarta district court recently rejected a plea from Tommy's lawyers that he be tried in a civil court and is proceeding with a criminal trial.

In an interview at the State Palace, Habibie told TIME he will not cover up for his former mentor. But he has neither frozen the family's holdings nor followed up on the investigation in any meaningful way. Private asset-tracing firms are excited at the prospect of a Suharto treasure hunt, if only Jakarta would hire them. Says Stephen Vickers, Asia chief for Kroll Associates, which investigated the wealth of the Philippines' Ferdinand Marcos: "In terms of dollars, we think this could be bigger than anything we have ever seen."

The search won't start in earnest unless the man in charge of the government's investigation, Attorney General Andi Muhammad Ghalib, gives the go-ahead. Ghalib, a three-star general in the Indonesian military, told TIME that he has found no evidence that his former supreme commander wrongly acquired state assets. But Ghalib has been moving slowly, and some of his own staff members are not convinced the investigation is serious. In the opinion of an official in the Attorney General's office, "Ghalib is on a mission to protect Suharto."

Nonetheless, the code of secrecy shielding the family is breaking down. TIME correspondents found indications that at least $73 billion passed through the family's hands between 1966 and last year. Much of that was from the mining, timber, commodities and petroleum industries. Bad investments and Indonesia's financial crisis have reduced the sum substantially. But evidence indicates that Suharto and his six children still have a conservatively estimated $15 billion in cash, shares, corporate assets, real estate, jewelry and fine art-including works by Indonesian masters Affandi and Basoeki Abdullah in the collection of Siti Hediati Hariyadi, the middle daughter known as "Titiek."

Suharto laid the foundation for the family fortune by establishing the intricate nationwide system of patronage that kept him in power for 32 years. His children, in turn, parlayed their ties to the President into the role of middlemen for government purchases and sales of oil products, plastics, arms, airplane parts and petrochemicals. They held monopolies on the distribution and import of major commodities. They obtained low-interest loans by colluding with or even strong-arming bankers, who were often afraid to ask for repayment. Subarjo Joyosumarto, managing director of Bank Indonesia, the central bank, confirms that during the time of Suharto, "there was an environment that made it difficult for the state banks to refuse them."

While the Indonesian economy was growing fast, it was possible to make light of the Suhartos' rent-seeking ways. Now, with half the population below the poverty line as a result of the financial crash, there is little doubt that the family grew wealthy at the expense of the nation. A former business associate of the children estimates that they skipped tax payments of between $2.5 billion and $10 billion on commissions alone. "It is very likely that none of the Suharto companies has ever paid more than 10 percent of its real tax obligations," says Teten Masduki, an executive member of Indonesian Corruption Watch, an anti-graft non-governmental organization.

Many Indonesians also blame Suharto for creating a climate of corruption that pervaded the entire economy. The World Bank estimates that as much as 30 percent of Indonesia's development budget over two decades disappeared through civil-service-wide corruption that filtered down from the top. "If you don't pay bribes, people think you're odd," says Edwin Soeryadjaya, a director of an Indonesian-U.S. telecommunications joint venture. "It's very sad. This is one of the most corrupt countries in the world."

How did Suharto Inc. attain its wealth, its power and its hold over the imaginations of millions of Indonesians? When Suharto became acting President of Indonesia in 1967, his unique blend of forcefulness and Javanese political subtlety was already manifest. The ousting of "President for Life" Sukarno, the nationalist founder of the country, took two years, and an accompanying anti-communist purge resulted in 500,000 deaths. But Suharto, an obscure general from a hardscrabble village in central Java, led an outwardly modest life. He and his late wife Siti Hartinah ("Madam Tien") initially lived in a simple bungalow in the Menteng district of Jakarta and drove a 1964 Ford Galaxy. That was in marked contrast to Sukarno, the self-styled "God-King," with his grand presidential palace and his glamorous third wife Dewi, a former Japanese hostess at Tokyo's Copacabana nightclub.

Behind the façade, however, Suharto showed an early interest in making money. In the 1950s, he was allegedly involved in sugar smuggling and other extra-military activities in Central Java that may have cost him command of the Army's Diponegoro Division during a 1959 anti-corruption drive. In his autobiography, Suharto asserts that he bartered sugar for rice to ease a local food shortage and that he did not benefit personally. In any case, the military transferred Suharto to a less influential position at the army staff college in Bandung, West Java.

In 1966, Suharto Inc. began to take shape. Before being officially named President, Suharto issued Decree No. 8 to seize two Sukarno-controlled conglomerates with combined assets of $2 billion. They became PT Pilot Project Berdikari, a company that Suharto placed under the management of Achmad Tirtosudiro, a former general who now heads a powerful Muslim organization founded by President Habibie. The firm was to become one of the main levers of the Suharto empire. The President's fortunes began to soar along with those of a few close associates, like Liem Sioe Liong and The Kian Seng, better known as Mohammad "Bob" Hasan. In late 1969, Suharto gave a partial monopoly --it later became total -- over the import, milling and distribution of wheat and flour to PT Bogasari Flour Mills, controlled by Liem's Salim Group. Over the years Liem --known as "Uncle Liem" to the Suharto brood -- and Hasan became Suharto's most trusted non-family associates and eventually amassed vast commercial empires.

The bedrock of the Suharto fortune was the presidential yayasan, or foundation. Dozens were set up, ostensibly as charities, and they have in fact funded a large number of hospitals, schools and mosques. But the foundations were also giant slush funds for the investment projects of the Suhartos and their cronies, as well as for the ex-President's political machine, Golkar. The foundations accepted "donations," though they were often less than voluntary. Beginning in 1978, all state-owned banks were required to give 2.5 percent of their profits to both the Dharmais and Supersemar foundations, according to former Attorney General Soedjono Atmonegoro. Suharto's Decree No. 92, in 1996, required that each taxpayer and company making more than $40,000 a year donate 2 percent of income to the Dana Sejahtera Mandiri foundation, set up to support poverty-alleviation programs (the order was rescinded last July). To this day, civil servants and members of the military donate a portion of their monthly salaries to the Amal Bakti Muslim Pancasila foundation, which was used by Suharto to win Muslim support.

While "donations" provided most of the foundations' revenue, there were other sources as well. In 1978, Suharto foundations took control of 60 percent of Bank Duta, a leading private bank, according to a former Bank Duta official. That share was gradually increased to 87 percent. The foundations invested heavily in private companies established by Suharto family members and cronies. After that, a helpful ministry or state-owned firm would award a contract or a monopoly to those companies.

Since Suharto's downfall, the foundations have been a major target of Indonesian investigators. Soon after Suharto's resignation, then-Attorney General Soedjono examined the books of the four largest yayasan. What he found was unsettling. "These foundations were set up to deliver social services," he says, "but Suharto had distributed the money to his children and friends." Soedjono discovered that one of the largest foundations, Supersemar, had dispersed 84 percent of its funds on unauthorized pursuits, including loans to companies owned by Suharto's children and friends. Suharto, as chairman, had to sign any check over $50,000. Soedjono submitted a preliminary report on his findings to President Habibie last June. He was fired five hours later. (The President says Soedjono was dismissed because he stepped outside the line of command on another matter.)

The Suharto reach extended well beyond the foundations' interests, and few deals were more lucrative than the family's oil businesses. State petroleum company Pertamina imported and exported much of its oil through Perta Oil Marketing and Permindo Oil Trading, two small companies in which Tommy and older brother Bambang acquired significant stakes in the mid-1980s. According to a senior official in Habibie's government, the firms received a commission of 30˘ to 35˘ a barrel. In the 1997-98 fiscal year, the two companies handled an average of 500,000 barrels a day, for yearly commissions of more than $50 million. Says former Mines and Energy Minister Subroto: "Pertamina could have exported directly. There was no need for these companies."

For years, Indonesia's corruption was the kind of petty favor-buying and commission-giving commonly found in the developing world. Two factors pushed the country into a league of its own. The first was Indonesia's position as an up-and-coming star performer in the Asian economic miracle, which brought a cascade of funds pouring into businesses and real estate. The World Bank estimates that between 1988 and 1996, Indonesia received more than $130 billion in foreign investment. "All this has been possible under the eyes of the West, which supported Suharto for 30 years," says Carel Mohn, spokesperson for Transparency International, a non-governmental organization based in Berlin.

The second factor was "the children," as the Suharto kids are known. All six are involved in business, a calling for which they were groomed from an early age. Sigit, the eldest son, was apparently pushed into business by his mother, Madam Tien, whose own behind-the-scenes dealings in the 1970s earned her the nickname "Madam Tien percent." Two sources who worked on Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport project say that by the time its two terminals were finished in 1984, $78.2 million had been given to Sigit in markups that appeared as cost overruns. Second son Bambang was helped by "Uncle Liem," who gave him a slice of the lucrative business importing and distributing basic commodities such as wheat, sugar, soybeans and rice. Through sugar trading alone, Bambang is estimated to have earned as much as $70 million a year, essentially for stamping documents.

The system worked so well that each of the children was given a cut as he or she moved into business, a practice that continued until last year. Eldest child Tutut rose to become the queen bee of the Suharto clan. The base of her empire is Citra Lamtoro Gung Group, and its first big business was building and operating toll roads. At the peak of Tutut's power, according to sources close to the family, investors seeking to meet her first had to pay as much as $50,000 as a "consulting fee" to her minders. "At the end," says an American lawyer with 20 years' experience in Indonesia, "the only thing that was transparent was the corruption."

Though much of the Suharto fortune has been lost through mismanagement and the country's economic collapse -- Tommy's PT Sempati Air, for instance, went bust in 1998 -- the family still has many viable businesses. One small example: Sigit's PT Panutan Selaras produces 25 percent of the premix -- high-octane gasoline used in Indonesian cars -- and owns 22 filling stations in Jakarta, Surabaya and Central Java. Tommy's PT Humpuss Trading, meanwhile, is also producing the high-end gasoline. And then there's real estate. While prices have plunged in Indonesia, the family's property holdings are today worth $1 billion, and many -- including rubber and sugar plantations, malls and hotels -- continue to bring in revenue.

A genuine investigation into the Suharto booty will probably have to await the next government. A parliamentary election scheduled for June 7, to be followed by a presidential vote in November, could change the political equation substantially. Suharto has at least one strong legal shield: the presidential decrees that laid the foundation for Suharto Inc. The former President was careful to have each decree approved by his rubber-stamp parliament, usually at the end of his five-year terms. Moreover, notes Juan Felix Tampubolon, one of Suharto's lawyers, Indonesia has a statute of limitations on most offenses: "For every crime he committed, if any, before 1981, the right to prosecute has expired under the statutory period." For Suharto of Indonesia, that -- along with $9 billion in an Austrian bank -- should offer considerable comfort in retirement.

With reporting by Zamira Loebis, Jason Tedjasukmana and Lisa Rose Weaver/Jakarta, Laird Harrison/Los Angeles, Isabella Ng/Hong Kong, Kate Noble/London and other bureaus