This week Current Account was amused to read in the Wall Street Journal that one of Telecom Eireann's strategic partners, Dutch telecoms giant KPN, has confessed to being involved in somewhat unusual business practices in Indonesia to make sure it was able to buy a 17 per cent chunk of the local mobile phone company, Telkomsel.

It seems KPN was so keen to get its hands on this chunk of Telkomsel that it agreed to guarantee a bank loan for a friend of the Suharto family who also wanted to buy 5 per cent of the mobile company. This investor, one Setiawan Djody, is a business partner for ex-president Suharto's son, Tommy.

KPN, for its part, has said the loan guarantee was based on "normal business principles" and its spokesman, Marinus Potman, told the Journal: "There is no hard evidence of wrongdoing."