Why Working at RGE Is As Bad As It Seems

Royal Golden Eagle is a private company that claimed to own assets that worth over $15 billion headed by Sukanto Tanoto, one of the richest men in Indonesia and Singapore. RGE Group’s diversified business covers many industries, including pulp and paper producer APRIL, agri company Asian Agri, palm oil company Apical, dissolving wood pulp maker Sateri and energy resource company Pacific Oil & Gas. Most customers know them from PaperOne, one of the most popular brands among the copy paper market. It has production lines and offices in Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Hong Kong, Brazil and Singapore. So why are their ex-employees so pissed off?

Many former employees from different countries describes working for Sukanto as a restless nightmare: mental and physical abuses, unpaid bonus and fear for Sukanto’s revenge when leaving the company. Working in Sukanto’s companies, some described their experience as being part of a gang, where you have to do shitty things when you join and almost impossible to leave the group without a fight.

The main complaint I heard from both current and former RGE employees were Sukanto’s abusive and violent behaviors. The most drastic example of Sukanto’s outbursts was the time when Sukanto hurled an ash tray at his employee’s head in his office and caused the employee serious injury. On another occasion, Sukanto flung his shoe at a senior executive during a meeting. He would scold and say degrading words to the employees in public. Most employees feared Sukanto and in some cases, felt “threatened and intimidated”.

What’s more, when Sukanto suspected an employee embezzle the company’s fund, he hired the Indonesian polices to arrest and torture his employee even before he found any evidence to prove such activity. As many employees recall, my father always fought with Sukanto on his abusive treatments and demanded to release the employees immediately as soon as he heard such thing.

Let’s not forget that an ex-employee exposed that Sukanto hired gangsters to set up scene and attacked his company truck drivers in 2001.

Sukanto’s bad temper was not reserved to his employees and reminded me some of the incidents my mother experienced. After my father passed away, through a family relative, Sukanto warned my mother to not go back to Indonesia or else he would hire people to murder my family and pretended it was an accident. His wife, Tinah Bingei even went to the extreme to ask my mother to kneel down before Sukanto for causing my father’s death due to her bad luck. It might seem absurd for a philanthropist who donated lots of money to education institutions to request a widow to do these, but that is who he is.

Many employees complained that they did not receive the bonus which had been delayed for years when they leave the companies. When Toba Pulp Lestari and APRIL were listed on the Jakarta Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange, most employees purchased the shares and even put in their retirement savings because of the sugarcoated words said by Sukanto. Little do they know that few years later, Sukanto purposely depreciated the share value and caused the shares to be delisted. All the employees’ hard earned monies were gone. The company announced that the delisting was due to the financial crisis that hit Asia in 1997. Ironically, according to Forbes, Sukanto’s wealth continues to grow despite the crisis.

In 2011, after working in APRIL for 14 months, Alain Monie, the former French CEO filed a lawsuit against APRIL in Singapore because he did not receive his salaries, travel expenses, bonus and compensation as promised.

APRIL defended the case by saying Alain’s salary does not make any commercial sense.

The High Court of Singapore dismissed APRIL’s appeal and ordered APRIL to pay Alain $7.5m plus interest rate and his legal fees within 4 weeks.

Today, Alain Monie serves as the Independent Director of Amazon, the President and CEO of Ingram Micro, one of the American leading wholesale technology products distributor.

The violence and unpaid salaries, including bonus are not the only things that RGE employees hate about Sukanto’s empire. It is the consequences that you are going to face when leaving his companies.

In November 2011, Rick Van Lee, a Canadian engineer was detained by the company security for 2 weeks and later jailed in Indonesian prison for six months after he told Riau Andalan Pulp & Paper that he is leaving the company when his 4-year-employment contract ended. RAPP accused Rick for stealing its confidential information before quitting the job.

“After Rick had informed APRIL about their decision to leave the company, various company officials started to act strangely against Rick; resulting in many questionable acts and accusations against Rick.”

– Carrot and Whip applied by APRIL Management (2011)

The company security first detained Rick in the dormitory in Kerinci, and then sent him to the jail in Pelalawang. Rick defended that he had accessed to those company data for more than 4 years, and he had been using those information in numerous projects and management meetings. He also had the documents to prove that he was given permission by the COO of APRIL, A. J. Devanesan to access such data. He had no idea why the company would use this excuse to sue him when he decided to quit.

The Indonesian court finally released Rick after 6 months due to pressure from the International community.

Another example of Sukanto’s revenge on his ex-employee when he found that he can’t keep him within the company: Mr. X, who prefers to stay anonymous, told me how Sukanto planned to destroy his new business venture after he left the company and started on his own. When he resigned, Sukanto asked him to stay. But he insisted on leaving the company.

Sukanto did not give any blessing to Mr.X and chose to send Indonesian government officials trying to get Mr.X new business into serious troubles and even spread rumors of Mr.X in the business circle. Mr.X’s business managed to survive under Sukanto’s pressures and even expanded to other countries.

I’ve also heard that several employees are on the run for the illegal activities they have done for the companies and now not being able to go back their hometown.

In short, his company is like a gang where when you are in there ,you have to do all the shitty things but when you want to leave there are consequences.

Today, an ex-employee has a simple message for Sukanto Tanoto. “Treat people fairly and nicely. That’s how you keep people.”