Members of the Rebels
Motorcycle Club Bali chapter
HE decor at the Heavy Duty Bar just
off Bali's tourist strip is pure bike-gang chic. In the upstairs pool room,
artwork of the skeleton-on-a-flaming-motorcycle school dominates one wall, and
another poster reads: ''When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.''
Ned Kelly and Southern Cross images suggest an Aussie connection.
It's 10.30pm and downstairs, a few
of the ''hot girls'' promised in the bar's advertising are lounging around
dressed in micro-shorts and tight T-shirts. They are bored. The poles in the
corners stand ready for a performance but are idle for lack of an audience. One
lone customer sips his beer.
''To be honest, this is about as
'kicked-off' as it gets these days,'' says Mark Berry, the muscle-bound
manager.
The HD Bar on Patih Jelantik might
be too far from Kuta's main nightclub strip to do much business, but Australian
police believe it signals something else - hard evidence that Australian bikies
are moving in on Australia's favourite holiday island.
The bar's part owner, whose name
card reads Adam ''Vigilante'' Abbott, is an outlaw motorcycle gang member from
Perth. He's a patched member of Australia's biggest ''1 per cent'' gang the
Rebels, which is the target of a new police crackdown called Taskforce Attero.
Outlaw gang members sometime refer to themselves as ''one percenters''.
Abbott bought the bar from another
Western Australian bikie, Howard ''Howie'' Wignall, a 26-year veteran member of
WA's most notorious gang, the Coffin Cheaters. Both men have a penchant for
guns and have served time in jail.
But theirs are not the only bike
gang insignia to be seen around Bali. They are part of what police believe is a
broader push by a number of outlaw gangs. The Bandidos have set up formal
chapters in Bali, Bandung and Jakarta.
Earlier this year, the Australian
president, Jason Addison, attended a rowdy ceremony to ''patch over'' dozens of
new Indonesian members, inducting them formally into the gang. The Finks and
Rock Machine are also believed to be showing interest in Bali.
Neither federal nor state police
would be interviewed for this story and it is understood they have no hard
evidence yet of wrongdoing. But they believe the gangs are coming to the
Indonesian party island for more than the surf.
As they come under increasingly
heavy police scrutiny in Australia, gangs are believed to be exploring criminal
opportunities in Indonesia including money laundering, the drug trade and
smuggling of various kinds.
Bali itself is a big market for
drugs, particularly among the thousands of foreign tourists who land each week.
Indonesia's lax laws governing the precursor chemicals used in drug manufacture
mean substances such as ephedrine are widely available on the street. The
mainland of Indonesia has a growing drug market both as consumer and producer.
The Australian Crime Commission
reported earlier this year that, in 2010, 133 million methamphetamine tablets
were seized in south-east Asia, a fourfold increase since 2008. The use of
crystal meth is also on the rise and a number of very large busts, mainly of
synthetic drugs, have been reported in the local press in recent months.
Earlier this year, the Australian
Federal Police called a group of their Indonesian law-enforcement counterparts
together in a hotel in Bali, and held an ''Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Forum'' to
warn them about the potential threat to peace and public order turning up on
their doorstep. But whether they do not recognise the threat, or whether they
fear the impact on Bali's tourist industry if they talk about motorcycle gang
activity, the Bali police are so far not prepared to say much.
''We haven't really noticed any
criminal activities,'' Kuta police chief I Gede Putu Dedy Ujiana told Fairfax
recently. ''Based on information from the internet, usually these groups will
try to show their existence by showing their logo, but there has been none so
far in Bali.''
This is not strictly true. The
Bandidos, for one, have made no secret of their presence. In 2010, they held
the first Bali Bike Week, attended by hundreds of gang members, many of them
wearing patches. A video posted on YouTube shows a huge, three-day outdoor
party featuring bands, DJs, dancing girls and drinking by hundreds of
leather-clad men.
The head of the organising committee
for the event, Hari Wiguna, says on the video that 600 came from Europe,
Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and other parts of Indonesia to an
event that included fund-raising for local orphanages, cleaning up the beaches
and planting trees in Bali's main nightclub strip, Jalan Legian.
''We are doing this to introduce our
new club, the Bandidos MC, to Indonesia,'' Hari says.
The following year, ''Bandido
Crispin 1 per center,'' the president of the gang's chapter in Phuket,
Thailand, wrote an account of the second Bike Week celebrations, welcoming
''our European Presidente and Australian Presidente together with our Asia's
Vice Presidente'' to Bali for a ''Patch Over Party … for our Indonesian
Brothers who were moving up from Probationary to be proud full members in our
Red & Gold Nation''.
Neither Adam Abbott nor Howard
Wignall responded to requests for comments in this story, but Mark Berry at the
HD Bar said it was unfair to say that either was part of a broader push by
gangs. ''Howie is the only Coffin Cheater in Bali, and Adam is the only
Rebel,'' he said.
However, the Facebook page for
''Rebels MC Bali'' suggests otherwise. It depicts eight Indonesians and a
Western man, who may be Abbott, posing in their ''1 per cent'' leathers with
Rebels patches.
Abbott and Wignall are not just any
expatriates - each has a significant criminal history and a deep interest in
firearms. Their adopted country has strict gun laws but these are undermined by
weak enforcement and porous borders. A recent report by the UN's gun control
body said the level of firearm and ammunition smuggling in Indonesia was
''high''.
Abbott's Facebook page shows him
carrying a South-African army R5 assault rifle. A picture of a semi-automatic
rifle is tattooed to the side of his shaven head.
At 35, Abbott has changed his name
at least twice, but, as Adam Schamotta, he was described by a court in 2002 as
having a ''passion for expensive firearms''.
The court convicted and sentenced
him to a two-year-and-nine-month jail term on charges of obtaining money from
banks by fraud and stealing as a servant. He subsequently lost his permission
to hold gun licences for 10 years - a suspension reduced on appeal to five
years.
Eight years later, in 2010, Abbott,
who goes by the online moniker ''gingrowler'', was described on eBay feedback
as a ''valued customer'' by a US-based manufacturer of gun holsters, including
those used to conceal handguns. He was also a ''valued customer'' of an online
hydroponics store, ''one of Australia's largest online suppliers of indoor
gardening''.
Wignall owns guns and collects
birds. But in 2006, he was banned by the WA State Administrative Tribunal from
holding licences for his numerous guns because his membership of the Coffin
Cheaters, with its history of firearms violence, meant that he was not a ''fit
and proper person''. He moved to Bali about two years ago, where he has
settled, marrying a Balinese woman. Wignall has a long criminal history in
Australia, with 55 convictions, including for drug possession and supply. In
1992, he was jailed for 13 months for offering a $15,000 bribe to a police
officer to drop an investigation of a drug offence.
During evidence to a tribunal in
2006, Wignall said the Coffin Cheaters were ''like my family''. Some people in
the gang were thugs who sold and supplied drugs, he conceded, but said of them:
''There are a hell of a lot of people in my club now that I don't agree with
what they do.''
In 2009, Wignall was named in the
Federal Court by Tim Johnston, the disgraced chief of bankrupt business
Firepower, as a stand-over man.
Johnston claimed that Wignall and
Sydney building industry ''identity'' Tom Domican (three times acquitted of
murder) had intimidated him until he gave $11 million to one particular
creditor, property developer Warren Anderson.
The Coffin Cheaters are known to
have strong relationships with Perth businessman and industrial ''mediator''
John Kizon, who also has businesses in Indonesia, including with members of
some of the country's politically connected oligarchs.
Wignall's links to Bali's nightlife
go beyond the HD Bar. He is often seen at one of the most popular mainstream
nightclubs in Kuta Legian, the Sky Garden.
At night, this multiple-storey pub
and nightclub conglomerate heaves with patrons and the skimpily dressed
hostesses ready to entertain them. The club recently held its ''2nd Annual VIP
Schoolies Party''.
Sky Garden manager Sean McAloney
denied in an email that there was any link, formal or informal, between the
Coffin Cheaters or Rebels and his club. Rumours that Wignall had an ownership
interest were untrue, he said - Wignall had simply been ''a loyal patron since
he arrived in Bali''.
Wignall's daughter, Jade, however -
who is pictured on her Facebook page aiming a pistol - is employed at the Sky
Garden as the ''PR host and promotions supervisor''.
Around the time Wignall appeared in
Bali, the Sky Garden changed security contractors, a controversial move in
Bali's gang-dominated security sector.
A number of sources have confirmed
that the Sky Garden sacked its previous security provider, Laskar Bali
(literally, Bali Army), a large and sometimes violent local group that
dominates the nightclub security business in Bali. They replaced it with a
group led by Jakarta gangster (or preman, literally ''free man'') Hercules
Rozario Marcal, who is originally from East Timor.
About that time, in early 2011, a
large fight erupted outside the club, with some antagonists carrying weapons.
McAloney said the fight involved only about eight people. Asked if it was
linked to the change in security contract, he said: ''I am not sure if this had
anything to do with our security, as there have been many theories.''
Asked about Hercules and Laskar
Bali, McAloney did not answer directly, writing instead: ''We hire security
based on their CV and skill sets. Our security come from all over Indonesia
(Bali, Central Java, Timor, etc) and ALL have been trained/certified by the
police.''
New security provider Hercules is
closely connected to ex-general Prabowo Subianto, the favourite to win
Indonesia's 2014 presidential election. A Jakarta source said Hercules had
become friendly with ''Howie'' Wignall and WA identity John Kizon through a
mutual interest in promoting boxing matches.
If Australian bikies are coming to
Bali to establish a criminal business, they are entering a well-established
gang scene. Observers believe they will need to either fight or make alliances.
''There are just so many actors
involved in Bali,'' says Dr Jacqueline Baker, a University of Wollongong
political anthropologist specialising in police in south-east Asia. ''You see
the Russian mafia in Bali these days. It's just such a big market. And it's a
really difficult market to take on.'
'
The competition for nightclub
security contracts is intense and can be a gateway to the lucrative business of
dealing drugs. There is no suggestion that the Sky Garden knows of or condones
drug dealing inside or outside its premises.
As for law enforcement in Bali, the
Indonesian police may view Australian bikie gangs as little more than
Harley-Davidson enthusiasts - a passion they have in common.
The country's Deputy Police Chief,
Commissioner General Nanan Soekarna, is, controversially, the chairman of the
Indonesian Harley-Davidson Club, and Baker says that because Harleys cost a
large multiple of an officer's annual salary they have become a highly prized
symbol of status.
''Owning one is a sign of power,
which is why officers sometimes demand them in tribute as 'gifts' from corrupt
businessmen,'' she says.
Australian authorities, meanwhile,
are concerned about what might happen in Bali, where 2500 Australians come to
holiday each week.
''Soon enough the Coffin Cheaters
and Bandidos will clash on Kuta Legian over access to market and territory,'' a
source said. ''The local police are completely unprepared. They have no idea
where this could go, and they don't want to admit they have a potential
problem.''
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