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SNOWING IN BALI

The lawyer came to me and said, 'They've offered us a deal; they want 275 million rupiah' — we worked it out as A$55,000 — and she goes, 'If you don't pay that by a certain time, a certain date, if you are one day late, they won't accept the payment.'

Otherwise we would have had to pay $180,000.

To whom?

The police wanted that; it would've got split up between the lawyers, judges, everyone. They're parasites, they are real parasites; everything is money, money, money. It ended up costing my family $55,000 for me to get home. If I didn't pay that, I would have done 15 years ... they were asking 15 years.

- Richard

Richard ended up doing three months.

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Cash wasn't always the reward for snitches; spite also played a hand, with some expats' villas raided after a tip-off by a vengeful local. Komang had been working for a Swiss furniture export company, being paid $250 a month plus commissions, a very good salary for a Balinese. But when Frenchman Gerard moved to the island to do marketing for the company, Komang lost his job. Bitter in the belief that Gerard had bad-mouthed him to the boss in Switzerland, he executed a plan of revenge. Using Gerard's Balinese maid to steal a joint from the house, he passed it to a police friend to test. It was marijuana; so two police searched his house, found a small stash and busted him. Without ready access to big cash, Gerard was taken to the concrete police cells, and then moved into Kerobokan Prison. After raising the cash, he cut a deal and got a lenient two years.

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