Robert Budi Hartono

Robert Budi Hartono (born Oei Hwie Tjhong, 28 April 1941) is an Indonesian tobacco billionaire who owns and runs Djarum with his elder brother Michael Bambang Hartono; according to Forbes he is among the richest people in the world, and the brothers have long been listed as the richest men in Indonesia ^{1 2}.

Robert Budi Hartono was born in 1941 in Semarang, Central Java, the second child of Oei Wie Gwan and Goei Tjo Nio; his elder brother Michael was born in 1939 ¹. He is married to Widowati Hartono and has three sons, and he lives in Kudus ^{2 1}.

His father Oei Wie Gwan bought a small kretek business called Djarum Gramophone in 1951 and renamed it Djarum; after a fire nearly destroyed the company in 1963 and Oei died shortly afterwards, Robert, then 22, and Michael inherited it, rebuilt it and modernized its equipment ^{1 2}. Djarum began exporting in 1972, introduced the machine-made Djarum Filter in 1975 and Djarum Super in 1981, and grew into a group spanning banking — the brothers are Bank Central Asia's largest shareholders — palm-oil estates of 65,000 hectares in West Kalimantan, property including Grand Indonesia, and the Polytron electronics brand ^{2 1}. A lover of badminton, Robert founded the PB Djarum club in 1969, which produced champions including Liem Swie King ². In September 2019 Forbes reported the two brothers' combined wealth at $35 billion ¹. One scholarly text attests a faith for Robert Budi Hartono himself: a 2026 study of religious harmony in Kudus in the journal Diya al-Afkar states that Djarum's leader Robert Budi Hartono is a Catholic. No second independent text attesting a faith for him was found, so under the museum's two-text rule his faith is recorded as unknown, with that attestation preserved in full in this record's data ^{3 1 2}.

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