A Pertamina general died with 54 million marks in Singapore accounts in his and his widow's names, and the courts gave it to the state oil company as bribes

General Haji Achmad Thahir was general assistant to Ibnu Sutowo, president-director of Indonesia's state oil company, Pertamina. He was authorised to sign contracts for Pertamina and its subsidiary PTKS, which hired German firms in 1973 and 1974 to build steel works. Thahir died on 23 July 1976. At the Singapore branch of Sumitomo Bank, 17 deposits in deutschmarks stood in the names "Mr HA Thahir and/or Mrs KR Thahir," totalling DM 53,972,374.12, with two more deposits in US dollars. Three days after his death his sons asked the bank to freeze the money. On 27 July his widow, Kartika Ratna Thahir, demanded payment of four sums and transfer of the rest into her sole name. On 6 May 1977 Pertamina claimed the deposits as bribes. The case lasted 16 years. On 3 December 1992 Justice Lai Kew Chai found that the deposits came from Siemens, about DM 15 million, and Klöckner, about DM 35 million, contractors Pertamina had paid. He held the deutschmark deposits were bribes held in trust for Pertamina. Pertamina failed to prove its claim to the dollar deposits. By March 1992 the total with interest was US$81.8 million. The Court of Appeal upheld the ruling on 25 August 1994. The Privy Council later endorsed the reasoning in a Hong Kong bribery case, and the case is cited as the start of the remedial constructive trust in Singapore.