📸 Photo

SNOWING IN BALI

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