Jakarta – Several Indonesian business groups have set up a slush fund to pay out bribes to hamper an investigation into official corruption in the logging industry, the Forestry and Plantation Minister said yesterday.

Mr Nur Mahmudi Ismail said firms which had colluded with ministry officials in the past had saved "billions of dollars" to influence the judicial process. "Groups which I am trying to push to the Attorney-General's office are currently preparing billions of dollars to influence the prosecution process so that it does not proceed smoothly," Mr Ismail told journalists in Jakarta.

The minister did not name the groups, but he said they were targeting officials in the Attorney – General's office, the Law and Legislation Ministry and his own department.

Asked if he was referring to former Indonesian trade minister and timber tycoon Muhammad "Bob" Hasan – who was detained recently on suspicion of graft relating to a mapping project – Mr Ismail said: "I don't know and I don't want to make an accusation. What we are trying to do is uphold the supremacy of the law, and this some of them do not like."

Mr Hasan, a timber magnate and close business associate of former president Suharto, under whom he served briefly as a minister, was detained last week. He was held as part of a probe into an US$87-million contract awarded to him by the Forestry Ministry in 1997 to perform aerial mapping and radar-imaging of forests.

The ministry last month reported irregularities in the mapping results, saying the technique used was obsolete and uneconomical and did not reflect the fee paid.