Schapelle Corby trapped by ‘sixth sense’ of experienced Bali Customs officer Winata

AFTER 20 years on the job, Bali Customs officer I Gustti Ngurah Winata had developed a sixth sense. It was this intuition that led to Schapelle Corby’s arrest.

Customs Officer Ngurah Winata in his office in Bali. Picture: Lukman S. Bintoro

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AFTER 20 years on the job, Bali Customs officer I Gustti Ngurah Winata, had a sixth sense.

If it wasn’t for that sixth sense Schapelle Corby may never have been arrested.

It was Mr Winata who was working on October 8, 2004, scanning all the luggage coming off Australian Airlines flight AO7829 that day.

When he saw an orange colour come up on the screen of his scanner, indicating perhaps a kind of vegetation inside a blue boogie board bag, he knew instinctively it was abnormal.

There was more than just a boogie board in the bag.

So suspicious was Mr Winata that he decided to dispense with the normal practice of marking an X on the bag to alert Customs officers at the front side to ask the bag’s owner for an inspection. He thought the owner might dump the bag and run away.

Instead Mr Winata followed the bag and watched from a distance as it was picked up near the baggage carousel.

Gusti Ngurah Winata, the Ngurah Rai Airport custom officer, show evidence to the Judge during the Corby's trial at Denpasar District Court in Bali, 2005. Picture: AP

Schapelle Corby’s younger brother James Kisina was carrying the bag and Corby and her two friends Alyth McComb and Katrina Richards, with whom she was travelling, went into the “nothing to declare” lane of Customs.

Alyth and Katrina went through first. Alyth had told Kisina to help his sister with the luggage as she struggled with her suitcase and the boogie board bag.

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Corby was annoyed, the bag’s handle had been slashed. And the zips were done up in the middle. She never zipped the bag this way, it was always on the side.

Winata approached Kisina and asked to check the bag. Corby interrupted. “That’s mine”, she said. Winata checked the name tag. It said Schapelle Corby.

Winata says he asked Corby to open the bag and she opened a small front pocket, telling him: “It’s empty, nothing.”

Winata asked to check the bag. What happened next has always been hotly disputed.

Winata insists now his version, given to court and police, is the truth of what happened that afternoon. Corby and her family say it’s a lie.

Winata wanted the big zip opened. He says she appeared nervous and tried to stop him from opening the bag, shouting no at him.

He asked why. “I have some …” Winata says Corby told him. He says Corby told him it was marijuana, she knew from the smell that had wafted from the open bag.

Customs Officer Ngurah Winata in his office in Bali. Winata was the Customs Officer on duty when he found marijuana inside Schapelle Corby's boogy bag as she arrived in Ngurah Rai Airport, Bali in 2004. Picture: Lukman S. Bintoro

Corby angrily disagreed, saying Winata was lying. He didn’t ask her to open the bag, she did that on her own, she didn’t push his hand away. She was not suspicious or nervous.

And at no stage, she says, did she ever admit to owning the marijuana in the bag that day. A second Customs officer, Komang Gelgel, said she did.

To this day Winata insists he was not lying about anything and that everything happened exactly the way he said in his first statement and in his court testimony.

Speaking to News Corporation on the eve of Corby’s deportation to Australia, he asks “why would I lie? What would be the benefit to me of lying?”

And he cares little that Corby and her team publicly called him a liar in court. He shrugs his shoulders now. Defence lawyers are paid to defend clients. No problem for him.

The lawyer wasn’t there that day, he was, and he knows what happened.

Schapelle Corby in pictures

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