Michael Backman – Three years ago, Ari Sigit was on the cover of Indonesian magazines trumpeted as Indonesia's business whiz kid. Today, Mr Ari's name tends to be linked more to drugs, sex scandals and cancelled contracts than to alleged business prowess. What happened in the intervening period? His grandfather, Mr Suharto, resigned as president.

Last month Mr Ari's wife, Gusti Maya Firanti Noor, was arrested. She was picked up in a Jakarta carpark while in possession of the drug crystal methylamphetamine. Back in the good old days when Mr Suharto was still in power, she almost certainly would not have been arrested and if she was, a well-placed phone call would have fixed things up. But not any more.

The iron fist of the law, though, is still being delivered in a velvet glove. Not for Maya the usual detention at the Pondok Bambu Womens Penitentiary in East Jakarta. No, she was allowed to stay in a room at the police station where she was first detained.

The Suhartos now find themselves caught between two competing forces. One is that they are still very rich and are able to buy themselves some measure of protection by greasing the right palms.

There are also many other officials and their families who accumulated huge wealth from corruption and nepotism, and do not want to see recriminations against the Suhartos for fear of their own positions.

The opposing tendency is that President Abdurrahman Wahid needs to be seen to be doing something to bring the Suhartos to justice.

Although Mr Suharto has not been president for more than two years, his arrest on corruption charges this month came only days before Indonesia's parliament was due to meet for its annual assessment of President Wahid's performance. The timing was more than just a coincidence.

Mr Ari and Ms Maya's slide backwards mirrors the gradual humiliation of the rest of the family. Mr Ari, like most of his relatives, grew ridiculously wealthy while Mr Suharto was president. He had amassed 28 companies in his Arha Group by the time his grandfather resigned as president. He was then just 27 years old.

Among his business schemes was the infamous Bali beer monopoly, whereby he conspired with the local governor to make it illegal to sell alcoholic beverages on Bali unless it first had a tax stamp attached that was acquired from his company.

He also attempted to monopolise the lucrative birds nest trade across Indonesia and the trade in imported traditional Chinese medicines. Then in 1997, he came up with a scheme to force all Indonesian schoolchildren, all 26 million of them, to wear school shoes that could only be bought from another of his companies.

That one caused such an outcry that Mr Suharto himself had to intervene to stop it. Other companies were awarded government contracts to make telephone boxes, print school textbooks, reclaim land and to construct tollroads, water pipelines and bridges.

One company, Arha Bali Semaranta Rafting, operated whitewater rafting in Bali. It came to grief in 1996 when several tourists drowned on an expedition it had organised, amid claims that it had cut corners on safety to reduce costs. Mr Ari's talents for business knew no bounds. In 1998 he revealed plans for his own consumer label that was to be called Sexy. The first Sexy boutique was to be opened in Jakarta by the end of the year. Its shelves were to be stocked with Sexy clothes designed by none other than Mr Ari.

A chain of Sexy cafes, Sexy soft drinks, and Sexy beer were also on the drawing board. But the economic crisis ended such ambitions, as did Mr Suharto's resignation.

With Mr Suharto gone from power, Mr Ari's contracts with the government were cancelled. The most significant was a multi-million dollar contract to build a toll bridge between the islands of Java and Madura. Mr Ari was down, but he was not out.

Last year, he was linked to the pirated video CD trade in Jakarta and has had to deny persistent rumors that he controls Jakarta's thriving ecstasy trade. To compound the unpleasantness of it all, Indonesia's media took advantage of the post-Suharto glasnost to publish lurid accounts of Mr Ari's affair with a 16-year-old television soap actress with whom he had an illegitimate daughter. The daughter was later taken to be raised by Mr Suharto's eldest daughter Tutut and in late 1998, the child's mother, much to the delight of local tabloids, filed a lawsuit in a Jakarta court to attempt to get access to her daughter.

Mr Ari's father Sigit, too, has had troubles. He is under investigation and several companies linked to him have had various government concessions and contracts cancelled. Widely regarded as the black sheep of the family with gambling and alcohol addictions, he played no active business role.

Nonetheless, he managed to amass significant stakes in at least 115 Indonesian companies largely because other business people, including many American and Japanese multinationals, that wanted to curry favor with Mr Suharto would cut Mr Sigit in on a deal by giving to him free stakes in their local companies. He also happened to be the passive partner in several business ventures by Bob Hasan – Mr Suharto's golfing and fishing buddy.

Mr Hasan, meanwhile, languishes in the office of Attorney-General Marzuki Darusman in a cell that Mr Marzuki will only say is of minimum conditions. He has been there for several months pending investigation into his alleged fraud and misappropriation. It is an ignominious end for the man who just three years ago was featured in Forbes magazine's billionaires list.

So, the temperature on the Suharto clan and cronies is being turned up. But the king hit is yet to be delivered. It probably never will be. Instead, we can expect a slow chipping away whenever it suits President Wahid. Having the Suhartos on tap to face charges, or investigations, whenever he needs a political distraction, suits his political purposes. Fortunately for President Wahid, the Suhartos are a big family.