english.jpnn.com, JAKARTA - Arifin Panigoro, a member of the Presidential Advisory Council (Watimpres), who was also an oil entrepreneur, has died at the age of 76.
Arifin took his last breath while in intensive care at a hospital in the United States on Sunday (27/2) at 02.29 local time.
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The Gorontalo native was the founder and owner of Medco Energy, the largest private oil and gas mining company in Indonesia.
He started his career as an electrical installation contractor. He founded the Medco Group, which started as a private contractor company providing onshore oil and gas drilling services, in 1980.
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One of the milestones in Medco's history was buying Stanvac, which later changed its name to Expan.
Currently, Medco is working on various upstream industrial businesses in oil and gas exploration and production, copper mining, gold mining, and downstream industries in power generation.
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Arifin was the 47th richest person in Indonesia according to Forbes.
In his political career, Arifin was known to be close to college students.
He was accused of thwarting the General Assembly of the People's Consultative Assembly, which was about to inaugurate Soeharto as president for the seventh time in 1998.
At that time, he had a meeting with a number of political figures at the Radison Hotel, Yogyakarta.
When the student action heated up demanding Soeharto to step down, Arifin provided logistical assistance to the students protesting at the House of Representatives (DPR) building.
Arifin provided assistance to prevent chaos and riots. He did not want any anti-Chinese sentiment or hostility between Muslims and non-Muslims to spread throughout Indonesia.
After Soeharto stepped down, Arifin then joined the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and ran as a member of the DPR for the Tangerang regency electoral district in 1999.
In 2005, he resigned from the DPR and PDI-P and formed the Democratic Reform Party. The party was founded by several former PDI-P members that were once close to Megawati Soekarnoputri.
Arifin also contributed to the development of national soccer through the Medco Cup tournament and was listed as the initiator of the Indonesian Premier League. (antara/mcr20/jpnn)
This news has been broadcast on JPNN.com with the title: Berita Duka, Arifin Panigoro Meninggal Dunia