Seth Mydans, Jakarta – Of course there was corruption under former President Suharto, said his half-brother recently, acknowledging a fact of life well known to all Indonesians.

"Suharto has always protected his corrupt subordinates," said the half-brother, Probosutedjo, who often acted as the former president's spokesman. "He got upset when anyone criticized his officers."

Now, almost a year after he was forced from office last May, prosecutors are nibbling around the edges of the huge financial enterprises of Suharto and his family. But many Indonesians question the government's commitment to serious investigations and prosecutions.

Suharto's youngest son, Hutomo Mandala Putra, 37, known as Tommy, was in court this week, accused of wrongdoing in a shady land deal. He is the first member of the family to face prosecution for graft.

Others of Suharto's six children have been questioned in recent months about their business dealings and Suharto himself was questioned in December for three hours, primarily about major tax-free charitable foundations he controlled.

"Isn't this what you want?" Hutomo said bitterly to reporters as he left a courtroom Monday where a judge refused to drop the charges. Hutomo has pleaded not guilty. A small group of supporters shouted from the sidewalk, "Long live Tommy!"

In fact, the case against Hutomo falls far short of the kind of prosecution that has been demanded by student demonstrators and other Indonesians. Estimates of the family's wealth have run into the tens of billions, and although they have lost control of a number of ventures in the last year, their interests still reach into many corners of the economy.

Hutomo is accused of graft in an $11 million land deal involving a retail company that is one of the smaller holdings in his wide-ranging roster of businesses.

The most flamboyant of the former president's six children, Hutomo controlled the country's huge clove industry, was the recipient from his father of lucrative tax breaks on a failed "national car" program, and splurged in 1994 with the $40 million purchase of the Lamborghini sports car company.

The direction the investigations take may be influenced by the outcome of a parliamentary election, set for June 7, and the naming of a new President, expected by the end of the year.

Public mistrust has been fostered by the fact that much of the current government – from President B.J. Habibie through Justice Minister Muladi – is made up of people who owe their careers to Suharto and grew wealthy alongside him.

"If Suharto does go to court, it could drag down the government, bringing senior incumbents and former officials – as well as all the cronies suspected of accruing ill-gotten wealth – into messy litigation," Suharto's legal adviser, Yohanes Yacob, said when the former president was questioned in December.

In this context, Probosutedjo's words acknowledging corruption within Suharto's circle could be taken as a veiled threat.

Habibie, for one, manages a state-financed industrial zone on Batam Island, near Singapore, that by some estimates was worth $60 million before the crash of the currency, the rupiah, in late 1997.

Suharto, for his part, is by his own account no more than a humble pensioner, living quietly in the same tree-shaded villa he occupied as president.

His true holdings, he told a local magazine, Dharmais, amount to just $3 million deposited in three Indonesian banks as well as two houses in Jakarta and a small plot of 12 acres of land.

All of this, Suharto said, was the product of nothing more than investments from his $75,000 annual salary.