Snowing in Bali

by Kathryn Bonella

  – Alberto

  Finally, he was piled into the car, his blindfold removed, and was driven to the police station to start the next phase of hell. He was in a bad state, but said nothing as he was processed. As he walked into the crowded cell, all 30 or so pairs of eyes turned to look at him. ‘Hi,’ he mumbled, then found a spot on the concrete floor among the sea of men. He was hurt and shaky, with no clue what his future held, but was praying he didn’t have to stay in here too long. The prisoners were packed in like battery hens, and with no windows and only a small vent, the air was stale and had a blue smoky hue from the endless cigarettes dangling from most lips.

  The concrete floor exacerbated his pain, but during the interminable days there was no choice but to sit in the cramped cell, usually playing cards, unable even to properly stretch out his legs. He nicknamed the hellish hot concrete cage ‘the freezer’ – because here life froze, with nothing to do but wait to learn your fate. He spoke little of his bashing, but if anyone asked they were usually blasé and thought he’d got off lightly. The locals suffered far worse brutality, with no possibility of consular intervention, not that Alberto reported to his consul. Indonesians were routinely shot in the leg, with many walking around in the jails with bullet scars to prove it.

  Alberto had long feared being busted and locked up in a tiny cell, but the reality was even worse. He was sharing a single filthy squat toilet with 30 men; they had no bedding, no sheets, not even a pillow – he used a book to rest his head. At night the sweaty men lay like tightly packed sausages, sleeping side-by-side on the bare concrete, uncomfortable any time, but with his bruises, Alberto found it excruciating, and it ensured they didn’t fade fast.

  There were always tensions and spats, with everybody hyper-stressed about their cases. Most were trying to cut a deal before the cops handed their case paperwork to prosecutors, at which point it became impossible to quietly slip out – avoiding jail time or a court case – and the price for a deal shot up, as more people required payment.

  Alberto had many visits, but often from locals sent by his friends to deliver cash and food. None of the dealers could risk going in and drawing attention to themselves. Immediately after arriving, Alberto had borrowed a phone to call Rafael, warning him that the cops had repeatedly brought up his name. Rafael already knew he was on their radar, but this was another red-hot alert, and he returned to strictly surfing and abstinence.

  I clean everything again, stop this, stop that, cut phone, change my phone number. I was already hot, because when Alberto got caught, I was wanted for a couple of years. I stop selling. Be quiet. Wake up 5 am, yoga, surf, come back. Bring my kids to school. Swim, surf. Not using coke, oh sometimes I use a little bit because you know I hid a little bit in the electric toothbrush.

  – Rafael

  Alberto also rang Andre, to warn him and ask for help, given the pills were his. Andre promised to talk to Alberto’s lawyer to try to organise a deal with the cops, but no deal was struck before he was moved to Kerobokan Prison.

  By that time, Alberto was looking forward to going to jail where, he’d heard, he could walk outside, play tennis and use weights. If someone had told him two months earlier that he’d be upbeat about going to the notorious Bali prison, he would have called them nuts, but with withered muscles and sickly pale skin, he couldn’t wait. As he walked inside, he felt sheer relief to see blue skies and green grass. But his surge of optimism deflated like a pricked balloon when the vivid greens and blues faded to the smoky bluish grey of another concrete cell. When the guard slammed the barred door, he was again banged up in a hot, smoky, windowless, overcrowded cell. This time a putrid stench hung in the cloying air.

  There were a lot of ugly, disgusting things; the toilet in the first cell I arrived at was broken, so people had to shit in plastic bags, tie a knot and throw the bags out the window. It was like 12, 15 people in one room.

  – Alberto

  Life improved substantially after he slung a bribe of about $150 to a guard and was moved to a less crowded cell in a block that held most of the 50 or so westerners. It was the party block, with non-stop music, drugs and booze. The cells had stereos, TVs, DVD players, and his cellmates threw him a welcome dinner of feta cheese, olive salad and cold beers – one of the best meals he’d ever tasted. The inmates were from around the globe, mostly doing time for drugs, and gave him tips, like slinging a bribe to the guards so he could have friends bring in a mattress, pillows, clothes, food, books and magazines.

  So then I started organising having a little life inside. We painted the entire cell. I ordered some speakers to be made by the prisoners so I had my music. I felt, ‘Okay, I’m still in hell but the hell is much better than where I was for the last two months.’ The biggest stress was waiting for my sentence, because you never really know what to expect. I started to get a rash, and it grew and grew and was real bad, itchy and painful. It was caused by stress and also, I think, because when they cleaned the water tank, there were three dead cats in it – one was like half decomposed. It was the water supply for the whole jail, and we were using it to shower.

  – Alberto

  Andre was still battling for him outside and had paid a lawyer $30,000 to cut a deal with the police and judiciary, who were promising a light sentence if the price was right. But the guys knew anything could still happen. Andre felt it was his respons­ibility to help Alberto, because they were his drugs, but he had to ensure he didn’t make it obvious he was involved and get ensnared in the case. He used the ruse of being a family friend who was just helping him out.

  You pay, you pay, you pay. I paid the lawyer, but I didn’t get close because for me it’s dangerous. I just paid the lawyer and said, ‘The family sent money to me, because I’m a friend of his family.’

  Did you visit him?

  No, just send money and food sometimes.

  – Andre

  Six interminable months passed before Alberto knew his fate.

  The defendant, Alberto Lopez, who was involved in the sale of 33 ecstasy tablets, was only sentenced to 1.5 years in prison yesterday at the hearing at Denpasar State Court.

  – Denpost, February 2003

  The jail was literally around the corner from the luxurious house Alberto had previously shared with the fat Diaz brothers, Mario and Poca, and dealer Jerome. It was a dizzying dichotomy between his old life of decadence and this life of primitive concrete cages and decomposing cats, but they were insanely close, separated only by whitewashed concrete walls. Knowing his beautiful life was so tantalisingly close was hard and depressing, but he placated himself by ruminating on the fact that he’d actually been lucky.

  I was playing with fire for years and years and years and I burned the tip of my finger. A lot of people they just played once and they burned their whole body. I got busted with a very small amount, and I just did a bit of time – a fucking lot of time for me – but still, compared to what I was playing . . .

  If you didn’t pay the $30,000, how long do you think you would have got?

  Probably, eight to ten years.

  Is that what the lawyer told you?

  Yeah.

  – Alberto

  *

  The sudden blitz by narcotics police was shaking everything up. No one was safe; everyone was a target, from the big dealers like Rafael to the rich expats enjoying a quiet spliff at home in the evenings, to local dealers, users and tourists on holidays. Narcotics teams were working frenetically to set up stings, working with their captives to do the notorious ‘changing heads’, paying cash for tip-offs – especially to catch a westerner, their prize target – and then kicking in doors.

  It was not just about cleaning up drugs in Bali; far from it. That had been the catalyst, but the crackdown and tougher sentences suddenly created a shiny new business, producing a torrential cash flow making some Balinese richer overnight than in their wildest dreams. Westerners living and partying in Bali had previously understood that, if busted with a user amount,
they could buy a ‘get out of jail free card’ for between $1000 or $2000. Now, if caught with a joint or a few ecstasy pills at home, the fee to avoid the problem leaving your lounge room had jumped to between $30,000 and $50,000. Police, whose average wage was less than $200 a month, were winning the lottery just by kicking in doors.

  There was all the police force running around like crazy, just trying to arrest as many people as possible. Everyone was like, okay, the ‘arrest race’ has started, they are going for everyone, they are just arresting people, every single day you would hear stories, ‘Oh, someone else got busted.’ So there was a time they started competing; there was a lot of competition between the narcotics teams. The ones that bust the most are the ones that make more money, that is a fact.

  – Alberto

  Was like very good business – don’t have any cost, police just kick some door and go out with $50,000 easy money. Good business. If you don’t pay, you stay. Shit.

  – Rafael

  Most foreigners arrested on drugs charges in Bali avoid serving their sentences by bribing authorities in Indonesia’s notoriously corrupt legal system.

  – AAP, 25 July 2002

  I tell you, everybody was getting paid. The foreigners were making these guys rich. The judge was driving a brand new white Mercedes. They realised that finally they could make money out of this, because they think all foreigners like us, if we’re having a beer on the beach, we’re millionaires. And they rounded up a bunch of foreigners all at one time and they started this business. The cops I think are the ones that figured it out – that there was a money machine, a cash cow, in their town.

  – Gabriel, American surfer

  It wasn’t just the police cashing in on the new business; everyone from snitches to prosecutors, lawyers and judges, were all suddenly getting windfalls. Even local journalists were benefiting. Lawyers were approaching them to keep their clients’ stories out of the papers, or at least restrict it to a small story off page one, to avoid the spotlight so cops and courts could more easily accept a bribe for a light sentence without scrutiny.

  If I’m a western expat busted with 4 grams of cocaine at home, how much do I need to pay to keep it out of your newspaper?

  It depends how rich you are. More rich you are, the more expensive the price. If I know you have a yacht, you have your own aeroplane, maybe a different price. Sometimes I wouldn’t take money, if it’s a big story.

  How does it work?

  Mostly the modus operandi is via lawyer. ‘I have client, and my client doesn’t want you to expose them, would you help me please? I have a fortune, I want to share my fortune with you, okay, am I clear enough?’ Something like that.

  What are the big cases lawyers often want to keep quiet?

  Drug cases with a foreigner suspect.

  And do you tell your journalists, ‘Don’t cover that court case today’?

  Yeah.

  And what if the journalist asks why?

  That’s my own business. ‘You have to choose, you obey my order, take it or you leave from this office.’

  – Editor, one of Bali’s major newspapers

  While expats busted at home could usually manage a sling to avoid the problem leaving their house, it didn’t always work. Some didn’t have ready access to big cash, or their case had already hit the newspapers and gone too far to avoid the spotlight. At that point lawyers, together with police and judiciary, had to devise tactics to be able to deliver a light sentence for cash, without red-flagging the bribe and alerting Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW), an active non-profit organisation initiated in June 1998 as an anti-graft watchdog.

  Tricks used were sometimes as simple as obscuring the quantity of drugs found, or having one sentence read out for public scrutiny in court and then quietly changing it on the court paperwork that was sent and held at the jail. Conveniently, the files were not stored on computer.

  Englishman Steve Turner slung a $35,000 bribe to covertly reduce his six-year sentence, announced in court, to three years, avoiding questions being raised over why he was doing three years for thousands of ecstasy pills, while penniless locals routinely served four years for possession of one or two.

  Money talks for drug criminals. Indonesia is notoriously corrupt, routinely languishing near the bottom of global corruption indexes, and the rot has spread through certain sections of the police and judiciary. One source says some of the wealthier and more savvy foreigners caught with drugs can bribe police officers and avoid court altogether, while others, less lucky, are kept in prison paying bribes until their funds are exhausted, at which point they are promptly deported.

  – The Australian, 13 November 2004

  *

  Lawyers, dubbed negotiators, kept their slippery tactics under tight veils of secrecy for obvious reasons, but in the case of English chef Gordon Ramsay’s brother Ronnie, busted in a public toilet in Kuta with heroin, his lawyer used the media to call on Gordon for cash, making it clear that money talks in Indonesian justice.

  Ronnie’s solicitor added his own criticism of the celebrity chef. ‘Money can certainly help the lawyers here . . . help the wheels of justice turn a little smoother,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how his brother can be so cruel. He can help but he chooses not to,’ the lawyer told the Daily Express.

  –Daily Express, 18 July 2007

  All westerners were seen as potential cash, but when it was revealed they were super-rich or at least had connections to big money, they became possible gold mines. When the press exposed Ronnie as the brother of multi-millionaire chef Gordon, word spread like wildfire in Kerobokan Prison that the new inmate’s brother was chef to the Queen of England – not quite accurate, but close enough. Ronnie might not have had a yacht or an aeroplane, but his brother might, and that was good enough.

  With his piercing blue eyes, Ronnie was the image of his famous brother, despite his rake-thin, drug-ravaged body and sickly appearance being the antithesis of marathon-fit Gordon. But for all the potential cash his capture could create for the Balinese judiciary, nobody was getting anything, because Gordon had cut ties with his addict brother. Ronnie had no line to his brother’s fortune and almost no cash.

  Heroin addict Ronnie, 38, faces ten years in a grim Balinese jail after being found slumped in a public toilet on the island, clutching a syringe and a £10 wrap of the killer drug. The walls of the toilet are smeared with faeces and crude graffiti. A bloodstained bandage lies discarded on the floor. Only a truly desperate man would consider even stepping inside, let alone rolling up a trouser leg to inject his feet with street-bought smack.

  – Sunday Mirror, 11 March 2007

  Gordon was refusing to send cash, having reportedly already spent £300,000 to help Ronnie try to kick drugs. So Ronnie and his lawyer started a shame campaign, pleading through the media outside Denpasar court for his brother to send him cash.

  ‘I told him, “Gordon, please help me. I have no one else to turn to.” It has been made painfully clear to me – with a lawyer I could be out in a few months, but without one I will be left to rot in this hellhole for the full ten years. I could die in here . . .

  ‘Gordon’s kitchen alone cost £500,000 and he drives a Ferrari. For less than a new set of wheels he could get me out of jail. I feel I’ve been hung out to dry.’

  – Sunday Mirror, 11 March 2007

  ‘I asked him for help. He knows I need help,’ the 39-year-old addict complained of his famous brother, who is said to have a fortune of more than £60 million from an international string of restaurants plus TV shows and books. ‘But he made his decision not to help me. I’ve heard nothing from my family. It’s heartbreaking.’

  – Daily Express, 18 July 2007

  Ronnie served just 10 months, with the judge explaining that he was lenient because Ronnie had pleaded guilty and expressed remorse. Without greasing the outstretched palms, it was impossible to get such a short sentence, so somehow he’d secured the cash needed to ‘make the wheels of justice tur
n a little smoother’.

  *

  Australian Richard Stephens was in Bali for a holiday when he was busted after buying a few straws filled with heroin from a dealer at the island’s notorious heroin mecca, Kampung Flores, in Denpasar. Richard had stood there as the dealer unzipped his adidas bum bag, took out his packet of Peter Jackson Extra Light, tossed out the last cigarettes and inserted six small straws of heroin, weighing a total of 0.3 gram. When the police stopped him on his bike moments later, they went straight to his adidas bag, pulled out the cigarette packet and found the heroin straws.

  I wasn’t a smuggler or anything, it was personal use, but we were set up by the police and I actually watched the police pay the informant out of my wallet.

  – Richard Stephens

  It is not uncommon for dealers to inform police if the buyer is a foreigner, sometimes snaring a lucrative payment for the inform­ation.

  – WA Today, 7 October 2011

  The police took Richard to a café, gave him a cup of tea, and told him to pay $10,000, explaining in broken English, ‘It will help you, you go home soon.’ To communicate more easily, Richard pulled out an Indonesian phrase book, and the cop pointed to uang lebih, ‘more money’.

  ‘Oh, do you want more money?’ Richard asked.

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Their eyes lit up.

  He realised I had understood what he said, but stupid me goes, ‘Nah, get fucked, I don’t co-operate with the police.’ I said, ‘No money, you are not getting no more,’ and he laughed. I wondered why he was laughing and didn’t really care. And then I realised, when I got to the police station, [and] in the next days, that you can buy your way out – that we had our chance but now it had gone too far, too many people had seen us, and too many people had to be paid. So I had to go to jail. If you keep your mouth shut and pay money straight away, you can basically slip out without anyone knowing.