Bali’s darkest secret has finally been exposed
It’s an island paradise that Aussies flock to, with luxurious villas and stunning remote island beaches. But there's another side to Bali.
It’s the most talked-about legal case in Bali and the biggest news story to emerge from the island this year: three Australians stand accused of gunning down another Australian man in a luxury villa in June in an alleged gangland hit.
Their faces covered in black balaclavas, hands bound with plastic restraints and bulletproof vests covering their chests, the defendants’ presence in a packed courtroom – and the looming threat of the death penalty – paint a picture of a destination with a no-nonsense stance on crime.
While those allegations, denied by the defendants, are scrutinised in a public courtroom, anyone looking at crime statistics, coupled with a long look at news reports on suspicious deaths and missing people, paint a different picture when it comes to the investigation of suspected criminality: of an island paradise with a dark underbelly where getting away with murder may be as easy as pulling a trigger.
The Global Organised Crime Index, which compares crime in nearly 200 countries, ranks Indonesia as the world’s 20th most crime-ridden in the world.
But only a little more than half – 57.75 per cent – of violent crimes are reported to police, according to figures from 2022 released by Indonesia’s statistics bureau. In the same year, the police National Criminal Information Centre reported 430,000 criminal acts, meaning some 320,000 crimes go unreported, let alone unpunished, every year.
In September, 25-year-old Chinese tourist Deqing Zhuoga died from suspected food poisoning at Clandestino Hostel in Canggu, the most popular tourist precinct in Bali. Zhuoga was one of more than 20 foreign tourists who fell ill after sharing a communal meal. Nevertheless, when this month News.com.au visited the hostel – who has strongly denied culpability – we discovered it was still open for business and still selling food to tourists.
This week, nearly three months after Zhuoga died and, not coincidentally, one week after the story made global headlines, police in North Kuta, a government area that includes Canggu, held a press conference to update the media on the progress of their investigation. Samples taken from the victims’ organs by a police forensic laboratory showed poison was no longer detectable, they said, and there was no evidence to suggest anyone was poisoned at the hostel. Case closed? Not according to the victims and other former guests who are demanding justice.
Three months earlier before the mass food poisoning event, a Western couple renovating a villa made a ghastly discovery: a human skeleton buried under their floor. Police were promptly notified, the remains were collected and sent to the coroner in Bali.
An autopsy revealed the skeleton as a caucasian-mongoloid mix leaning towards caucasian. The apparent cause of death was identified as blunt force trauma wounds to the head, which is to say he was beaten to death. The information was shared with North Kuta police. But that’s all we know because for unspecified reasons, the investigation has stalled.
Then there’s the killing of Chinese couple Cheng Jianan and Li Chiming, a crypto tycoon worth three-quarters of a billion dollars, at the InterContinental Hotel at Jimbaran Beach in 2023. Jianan – the female – was found in the bathtub, strangled with a torn strip of pyjamas. Chiming’s body was found in the hallway, covered in blood following what appeared to be a very violent struggle.
Surveillance records show the couple had booked multiple hotel rooms for the same night, rarely left their room and were constantly looking over their shoulders. Rumour has it that Li was linked to the crypto-industry’s criminal underbelly and that former associates sent a hit squad to Bali to eliminate him. But police concluded it a double murder suicide: that Li strangled his girlfriend before stabbing himself repeatedly in the neck with a beer bottle.
In 2017, 63-year-old Australian retiree Stephen Richardson was found dead in his villa in the beach town of Sanur, blood scattered throughout. When his sons visited Bali to find out what happened they claimed they were given no information by the police, who the sons said appeared disinterested in the case. No suspects were identified and no arrests were ever made.
“There are just so many questions that have gone unanswered that could so easily be answered but it’s just not happening,” Aaron Richardson told A Current Affair.
A May 2025 survey by research firm Indikator found public trust in the police in Indonesia had fallen to a record low of 23.7 per cent. A recent revision to the Criminal Procedure law with vague provisions and loopholes that watchdogs say incentivise misuse of authority has further eroded trust. And it’s made finding anyone in Bali willing to go on the record about what they think about the police impossible.
“With the current political situation and the latest criminal procedure code, it will facilitate wider and wider authority for the police; I don’t feel safe making any public comment about them,” a bureaucrat in Bali who works closely with police told News.com.au.
“But off-the-record, I can say police in Indonesia do not do a good job at law enforcement and (some) are particularly ineffective, the worst of the worst.”
*Dave Smith is an alias used to protect the writer from reprisals
