As long-term readers of this column will have realised, Pierpont is unfashionable. He is white, Anglo-Saxon, Anglican, heterosexual, married and monarchist.

To add to this impressive list of black crimes, he is also a financial xenophobe. That is, Pierpont dislikes investing overseas because he finds it hard enough to make a profit in Australia without trying to understand how foreigners do business.

However, while reading a court filing last week, Pierpont suddenly began to comprehend how to do business in Indonesia. Or how business used to be done in Indonesia, anyhow. The filing is by Oceanic Exploration Company of Delaware, which is suing another Delaware company named ConocoPhillips Inc on grounds that it stole Oceanic's Timor Sea oil leases after Indonesia made a successful unconditional takeover bid for Portuguese Timor in 1975.

Statements of claim to Australian courts are cluttered with legalese, but their American equivalents make quite a gripping read. The language is dramatic to the point of hyperbole.

The Oceanic filing, among other items, gives the US District Court in Washington an insight into how business was done in Indonesia under General Soeharto.

In the oil industry, Indonesia's state-owned oil company, Pertamina, was a required participant in all oil and gas ventures in that country.

Let's say Blue Sky Oil wanted to drill for oil on the Iguana prospect. First, Blue Sky would have to take Pertamina as a partner. Pertamina would then require specified Indonesian contractors to be used on the project. These contractors were owned by the Soeharto family or friends.

Oceanic says one of the required subcontractors was PT McDermott Indonesia, which was a joint venture between McDermott International and Mohammed ("Bob") Hasan. "McDermott provided the resources and expertise, while Hasan handled interface with the Indonesian government and Pertamina," the filing said.

"If oil companies were to receive approval for projects, they needed to use PT McDermott in those projects. Hasan typically would receive a 20 per cent agent fee for his efforts. That fee was then paid to the Soeharto family."

The mention of good old Bob's name sent Pierpont into flashback mode for half a magnum of Bolly. It made Pierpont nostalgic for the great Bre-X scandal, where Bob had filled much the same role, becoming a friendly agent for what was supposed to be the world's biggest goldmine, but turned out to be the world's biggest salting. Pierpont is glad to learn that Bob also diversified into oil, which must have been a steadier income.

If Blue Sky struck oil, it would be exported by Pertamina through two marketing companies named Perta Oil Marketing and Permindo Oil Trading. Both were substantially owned by sons of Soeharto. On each barrel of oil sold, commissions of US30" to US35" went to the family.

In the mid-1980s, Pertamina established Rainbow Oil & Gas Company, a shell corporation in Los Angeles. If Blue Sky wanted to tender for energy rights in Indonesia, it was a good idea to do it in partnership with Rainbow. Upon winning the tender, Blue Sky would buy out Rainbow's interest in the partnership. This was, of course, highly lucrative to Rainbow.

Meanwhile, Rainbow thriftily kept operating expenses low. It didn't even have a physical office in Los Angeles. Its registered address on Sunset Boulevard was a post-office box. Rainbow seems to have operated from about 1985 to 1995 and Pierpont only wishes he had been a shareholder. Profits like that could certainly overcome your correspondent's xenophobia.

Soeharto issued a presidential decree that Pertamina had to donate varying percentages of its revenues to private foundations controlled by the Soeharto family and friends, most particularly various military leaders. These foundations were charities – their main charitable activity having been to keep Soeharto and his colonels from poverty.

Indeed, after Soeharto was shown the door, the new Indonesian attorney-general investigated the Supersemar Foundation, which had been established to promote education. The attorney-general discovered that some 84 per cent of Supersemar's revenue had been disbursed on unauthorised projects, including loans to the Soeharto family.

On this basis, we should be safe in assuming that the Soehartos are frightfully well educated, although Pierpont wonders a bit about young Tommy.

But the Supersemar episode indicates that today's Indonesia mightn't be what it used to be. With Soeharto gone and Rainbow having retreated inside its post box, Blue Sky might not be able to do good old-fashioned deals any more. A pity, because Soeharto did the sort of deals Pierpont can understand quite easily.