Page 13: Greed is the word as Bali sex raid plot thickens
As the fallout from the Bali sex raids — involving former AFL star Rick Olarenshaw and Melbourne couple Michael and Lynley Le Grand — continues, bizarre, bitter plot twists have been revealed.
Page 13
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Greed. It’s the one word at the centre of the Bali sex raids that keeps coming up.
Former AFL premiership star Ricky Olarenshaw had been running an alleged brothel called Flame Spa for years, flying under the radar on the paradise island.
Then a middle-class Melbourne couple, Michael and Lynley Le Grand, opened the Pink Palace, flaunting their so-called spa’s “sensual massages” from highly trained “beautiful therapists”.
Balinese locals were furious; Olarenshaw told the new kid on the block to “stay in his lane”.
The situation became blurred when Olarenshaw split from his wife, Sarnanitha, over claims he cheated on her.
Now it has emerged that in a bizarre, bitter plot twist, that Olarenshaw’s associates allegedly used Le Grand to dob in his former wife to the cops.
That backfired on Le Grand, 50, who is now sitting alongside his 44-year-old wife, Lynley, in Bali’s Denpasar police station. Their three children have been sent back to Australia.
They are just days away from being thrown inside the notorious Kerobokan Prison, where drug smuggler Schapelle Corby spent nine years, model Michelle Leslie did time for drugs – and where Bali Nine duo Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were held before they were executed in 2015.
Australians in Bali who knew the Le Grands and Olarenshaw say they are stunned at the stupidity.
“Brazen, an absolute c---head”, are just some words used to describe Le Grand this week. “He wanted to be the Bruce Mathieson of Bali” are more, referring to Le Grand’s legion of sports bars he had acquired on the party island like the Australian pokies king.
Before moving to the Bali hotspot, Le Grand had built quite the reputation as a nightclub promoter at Toorak Rd’s Saloon Bar back in its ’90s heyday.
The problem for Le Grand, and Olarenshaw and his Australian business partners, was that the next step in Bali was illegal.
“No one wants Bali to be another Thailand and go down the seedy red-light district route” is how one Aussie expat described the recent sex raids into spas working as alleged brothels.
“He had it all but he just kept shoving it in your face and down your throat.”
The crass phrasing would not be lost on Le Grand. When he opened the Pink Palace in May, it boasted slogans such as “Happy coq, happy life”.
“You can’t do that here; the Indonesians are proud and you have to show respect. There is a way of doing business here and to be successful, but that is just getting greedy,” the expat said.
Others said the Le Grands were in trouble, with Balinese authorities looking to make an example of foreigners.
“Once it’s out in the media, you’re gone,” another source observed.
After opening in May to much fanfare, with menus blatantly offering “sensual services and stimulation”, the Pink Palace was already under the close eye of Indonesian police. Not five months later and its flagrant sky-high sign is now covered up and police tape wrapped around the now-shut “spa” doors.
Ni Luh Djelantik, known as the most powerful woman in Bali, raised concerns about the Pink Palace and had the place shut down for three weeks shortly after it opened. But Le Grands allegedly ignored the warning signs and kept openly promoting the brothel.
Ms Djelantik, a Bali senator, this week said: “I personally give the highest respect to the Bali police chief and his staff, they firmly raided the prostitution business under the guise of a spa.”
Olarenshaw did play the game, so to speak. He looked after the Bali Geckos AFL team, promoting the sporting code and getting big names to visit the tourist hotspot and put back into the island.
Now many high-rolling sponsors are quietly pulling funding from the team, as Olarenshaw and his Australian business partners wait and see if Bali police chase after them. “At least at Flame Spa it was a bit more discreet,” one local said. “Everyone knew what was going on there … but the Le Grands took it one step further.”
Plenty of current and former footy stars would get the Olarenshaw service when over there. Page 13 is not suggesting they visited Flame Spa or knew what was allegedly going on there. But he would help them to play pickleball, work out at his F45 gyms, and get a manicure at his and estranged wife Saranitha’s Mynx beauty salon.
But what happened at night, until now, stayed at night.
Stories are starting to leak, including one about a “special” named after an AFL star, who had asked to see all the women available and then said “I’ll have the lot”.
Olarenshaw, who threw a birthday bash at Flame Spa last year dressing up as Hugh Hefner to celebrate his 50th milestone, was also being less discreet.
Sarnanitha, known as Nitha, was arrested in a separate raid at the same time as the Le Grands. Messages sent from one of Olarenshaw’s business partners, supplied by Nitha’s lawyer, suggest that he had threatened to get Le Grand to dob her in to the police during a business dispute.
Nitha claimed through her lawyer that she was a victim of Olarenshaw, who had suggested to her that the Flame Spa, which opened in 2017, start offering sexual services in 2019.
“It was Ricky’s idea to increase the turnover,” Nitha’s lawyer Donny Tri Istiqomah said in a translated interview this week. “Flame Spa offered sensual massage since 2019 but it’s not intercourse like in the Pink Palace.”
Mr Tri Istiqomah added that it was also “Ricky’s idea” to refrain from offering full brothel services.
Now Olarenshaw’s chances of ever seeing the daughter he shares with Nitha have been dealt a blow after Bali police warned the investigation into allegations he ran a brothel was still ongoing.
Olarenshaw, now lying low in Australia, did not return calls. He risks being arrested if returns to Bali, with police saying they were looking at further suspects in the Flame Spa case.
“Yes, it could be. It can happen. The investigation is underway,” Bali Police spokesman, Jansen Avitus Panjaitan said.
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