Eka Tjipta Widjaja

children = 40+, including Oei Hong Leong relatives = Fuganto Widjaja (grandson) module =

Eka Tjipta Widjaja or Eka Tjipta Widjaya , born Oei Ek Tjong , was an Indonesian businessman who founded the Sinar Mas Group, one of the largest conglomerates in Indonesia. After immigrating to Indonesia with his family when he was a child, Widjaja became a member of the PCC, traded copra in the mid-1950s, moved into the palm oil industry soon after, started a paper factory in the 1970s, and then entered financial services in the 1980s. At the time of his death, Sinar Mas had interests in paper, real estate, financial services, agribusiness, and telecom with holdings primarily in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and China, and Widjaja was listed by Forbes as the third-richest person in Indonesia with an estimated net worth of US$8.6 billion.

Early life Widjaja was born Oei Ek Tjhong ( (Several sources disagree on his exact birthdate or birthyear.) He was the son of a Celebes-based trader. Around 1930, he and his mother moved to Indonesia–then the Dutch East Indies–to join his father who had already settled in the city of Makassar, and he started helping his father to run a small shop. He was educated in a local Chinese school but left at the age of fifteen to work as a hawker.

Career In his early career, Widjaja did various business, including trading cooking oil and agricultural products, coffee shop, pig rearing, bakery, and grave construction. During Japanese occupation, price controls devastated his cooking oil business. When Indonesia's war for independence against the Dutch crushed his commodity-trading business in 1949, he sold family jewelry to repay creditors and traded in his car for a bicycle. In the same year, he started Duta Pertiwi, a property developer and real estate business.

Also in 1982, Widjaja acquired Bank Internasional Indonesia (BII) and founded PT Internas Artha Leasing Company. but due to the 1997 Asian financial crisis, it failed in April 1998 with a debt of US$4.6 billion (the largest foreign debt owed by an Indonesian corporation at that time) and was nationalized in April 1999.

In 1990, Widjaja received an honorary doctorate from Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas, United States.

By the mid-1990s, Widjaja's best-known asset was a controlling stake in Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), a Singapore-based company listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the 10th-largest paper company in the world. APP has also been convicted of being involved in illegal logging in Cambodia, Yunnan Province, China, destroying ancient rainforest and the illegal felling of over 50 thousand acres (200 km2) of forest in Bukit Tigapuluh national park.

As of 2003, Widjaja lived primarily in Singapore and had turned over day-to-day control of his businesses to his extensive family.

Widjaja had several wives and at least 40 children.

His first wife was Trinidewi (or Trini Dewi) Lasuki, Sukmawati was previously married to her cousin, Rudy Maeloa, who was Eka's right hand who died in 1988. Teguh's son, Jackson Widjaja, is the CEO of Paper Excellence, Catalyst Paper, Domtar and Resolute Forest Products. These companies' pulp and paper capacity will be more than 11 million tons per year after the acquisition of Resolute. Teguh's brothers are or were in charge of other divisions; Eka's third son, Indra Widjaja (Oei Pheng Lian or Oei Beng Nien ).

Some of Eka's other wives and their children have been given their own business groups to manage. His seven children by one wife—Mellie Pirieh, who died in 2009

After Widjaja's death, his family continues to have a net worth of $9.7 billion and is ranked second on the list of Indonesia's 50 Richest List as of December 2021.

Death Widjaja died on 26 January 2019, at his home in Menteng, Jakarta. He was buried on 2 February 2019, in the family cemetery in Karawang, West Java. After his death, there have been news on family disputes regarding his will(s).