Thread: Behind Bali's sunshine and beaming smiles lies a sinister secret

The rise of violent gangs that are increasingly targeting westerners.


In the next few weeks, Juan Delgado* will sell his portfolio of Bali properties and, against his better judgment, hand $US120,000 to the same thugs who a few months earlier invaded them and threatened him with death. Meanwhile, Susi Johnston will keep her stunning villa in Canggu, but only after it too was violently invaded by gangsters who threatened her and tore up her possessions as she locked herself in the study. She won't pay a cent. In fact, the instigators - the estranged nominee she used to buy her property and the man who hired the gangsters - will face a criminal trial.

Johnston knows of about 100 similar cases in which attempts have been made to separate expatriates in Bali from their properties. And she - a widow living alone in the house she built with her husband - is the only one she knows of who has had the local contacts, the will and the luck to win the battle. Both Delgado and Johnston came face to face with one of Bali's darkest secrets: the pervasive, and growing, power of gangsters known as preman - literally "free men". These steroid-munching mafiosi, who take ritual Hindu weapons as their logos and their style cues from the military and outlaw motorcycle gangs, belong to a growing number of groups that sometimes clash violently on Bali's streets.


Agung Ari, a leader of the Laskar Bali gang. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen


A lucrative area of specialisation for these gangsters is property repossession, sometimes involving force, and particularly aimed at Westerners. But that is just one of their revenue streams. Gangs also provide the flint-eyed young men working the doors of Balinese nightclubs. If you find yourself inside Kerobokan prison, they may beat you up or try to get you hooked on drugs. If you run a business, they may extort money from you, using threats of violence.

There are now strong indications that at least one Bali preman group is forging membership links with an Australian bikie gang, the Rebels, which is establishing a foothold in the lucrative tourist hotspot. But the senior members of these gangs also occupy important public-service positions, and seats in the Indonesian national parliament. They have provided security for a trip to Bali by Barak Obama, and they campaigned hard in support of both the province's governor and last month's unsuccessful Indonesian presidential candidate, Prabowo Subianto. And you'll see them smiling down, arms crossed, gang insignia prominent, from gigantic posters at Bali's roundabouts.

Juan Delgado was a man in love. In 2001, in his home country of Spain, he married his Indonesian boyfriend, Agus*, and a few years later they bought a house in Bali as an investment and holiday home. In Indonesia, it's illegal for foreigners to own property, so, like a fast-growing number of Australians chasing their Bali idyll, Delgado bought the house in the name of an Indonesian national - in this case, Agus.

In October 2009, the couple took the leap and moved permanently to paradise. Delgado quit his job in Barcelona and sold his apartment. With the money, he bought four more properties in Jimbaran, in Bali's south. Agus's name was on all the paperwork.



Many Australians, encouraged by local lawyers and real estate agents, use Indonesian nominees, often their household staff or friends of friends, to "buy" Bali property. The nominee's name appears on the title deeds, but a series of side contracts spell out the true situation. Legally, though, the arrangement is fraught with danger, which Delgado abruptly came face to face with in 2012 when, with little warning, Agus left him. "I found two of the land certificates gone, cash missing, a bank account in Spain emptied," Delgado says.

He was devastated, but says he intended to relinquish any claim over two of the five houses and give them to Agus outright. Events, though, moved faster than he could. Without his knowledge, Agus took out a $US55,000 loan using the houses as security, and started spending up big on designer clothes, jewellery, and foreign trips. Soon he was defaulting on his loans and, in August last year, he paid gangsters to take possession of the properties in his name.

Delgado had no idea Agus had done this, but soon found out when he went to inspect his houses. "Two of them were unoccupied, but when I went to one of them some people were inside," he recalls. "I saw preman - two or three of them - and I called the police. I went inside with the police and saw the men had a samurai sword and a handmade gun." The police did little: "They said they couldn't get the people out of the house because it was 'under litigation'. " The gangsters settled in.

Less than a week later, preman broke in and occupied a second house, then tried to get into a third. "There was a guest there and they tried to push the guest out."

One night, Delgado went to one of the houses and found it unoccupied. He went inside and found a pipe used for smoking crystal methamphetamine - ice, or sabu. The next morning, nine black-clad men and Agus showed up and forced Delgado out onto the street. Once again he called the police. As they all waited, one of the men caught Delgado's eye through a window and drew his thumb across his throat.

This time, though, because he was the one living in the house, the police let him stay. The gangsters departed, but Delgado was petrified: "Three houses with preman in them. I couldn't sleep for many days."




In desperation, he sent Good Weekend a dead-of-night email: "I fear for my life because I've read about so many foreigners found dead in mysterious circumstances and I don't wanna be another one."

Delgado tried to get local police to act. They told him to go to the district police. The district police sent him back to the local police: "Everyone was afraid to take this case." Meanwhile, Agus had reported Delgado to the Indonesian Immigration Department, and also to the police on a trumped-up charge of property damage relating to the day he was kicked out of his house.

Susi Johnston has become an authority on forced property repossessions since her experience, which also involved the nominee owner of her own property trying to claim it from her to pay a debt. Johnston, too, was threatened with deportation and actually spent a few days in jail after her tormentors planted drugs in her car. Johnston says these are becoming standard methods used by Indonesian nominees, backed by the gangs, to increase pressure on foreigners to sign over the rights to their co-owned properties.

As Delgado's property dispute began in the courts, he was confronted not by a lawyer, but by one of the gangsters: "He was standing in front of me, taking photographs, intimidating me."

Then, in January, 12 men came to the office of his lawyer, Reydi Nobel. Nobel says two of them were associated with the Rebels and shows me a photograph of a man who appears to be a Rebel, leader Adam "Vigilante" Abbott, with a group of Balinese men in Rebels regalia. "This man and this man," Nobel says, pointing, "were in the group that came to my office." The men demanded $US120,000 to stop the intimidation. "The preman said, 'You have to pay quickly or we'll be angry,' " Delgado recalls.

Initially he refused, but he was scared and worn down by the fight. The courts in Bali, as in most of Indonesia, are often corrupt, so legal outcomes are uncertain and can be expensive. Eventually, he capitulated. "Now I'll sell everything and move to an area where people don't know me in Bali," says Delgado. "I will sell up everything and pay."

Delgado's tormentors bore the insignia of a new gang on Bali's streets, called Satria Bali (Knights of Bali). It's an offshoot of the oldest and best-known gang, Laskar Bali, literally Bali Army. Both use as their logo the trishula - the weapon wielded in mythology by the Hindu god Shiva and used to sever the head of Ganesha (ironically, the lord of success).



Read more: The dark side of the sun

eat , pay , leave ?

What a load of shit.

He bought his boyfriend property, who then left him and sold it.

End of.

as for paying $120K intimidation money? Liar or wanker.

sure preman are in bali, they are petty thugs nowt more.

sure Aussie MC gangs exist in Bali, but they dont have much of a foothold.

A mixture of truth and fantasy in that article.

The reason foreigners cannot buy property, is so the indigenous people can afford to .
It's a good law .

Originally Posted by Necron99

In the next few weeks, Juan Delgado* will sell his portfolio of Bali properties

Housing is an essential, not an investment,,,
serves him right , greedy scum got burnt .

Originally Posted by Necron99

Juan Delgado was a man in love. In 2001, in his home country of Spain, he married his Indonesian boyfriend, Agus*

ba hahahajhaha
you'd have to have a heart of stone not to laugh ..

Originally Posted by Necron99

Agus took out a $US55,000 loan using the houses as security, and started spending up big on designer clothes, jewellery,

What a surprise a homosexual, all of whom are stuck at the silly adolescent stage,
wasting the money on frivolous crap.



A long winded piece of journalism, not even a photo of the Spaniard.
The short version :
A greedy Spanish puff gets ripped off by an even gayer Indonesian , then a gang of real men ride in on motorbikes and take the lot !
happy ending,!!

Originally Posted by blue

then a gang of real men

does the thought of all that leather get you wet in the fork ?

"real men" don't feel the need to compare penis sizes