Freelance Journalist Deported From Bali After Dispute With Sanur Guesthouse Owner

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Bali Immigration has deported a Russian-German citizen after he refused to settle his accommodation bill. The man, known by his initials AA holds both Russian and German passports, he is believed to have been a German Army Marine in a previous life. AA had been in Indonesia since 2021, and during his interrogation admitted to being a freelance journalist and blogger. 

AA was bought to the attention of Bali police and immigration after a dispute with his local landlord about the cost of accommodation. It has been reported that 39-year-old AA refused to pay for his lodgings in Sanur during July. After an agitated back-and-forth, the accommodation owner contacted the local police. 

The Head of the Bali Ministry of Law and Human Rights, Anggiat Napitupulu, told local reporters that ‘In his confession, AA conveyed that there was a conflict between himself and the innkeeper. AA feels that he does not get facilities at the inn according to the agreement’. Despite attempts at negotiation, AA felt that he had been underserved and refused to pay the innkeeper what he was owed.

The accommodation owner, at his wit’s end, not only contacted the police for their assistance in getting AA to pay up but also because he refused to check out of the premises. The police arrested and handed him over to Denpasar Immigration who conducted background checks on AA.

They found that he first entered Indonesia on the 23rd of April 2021, on a 60-day social visa. He arrived at Soekarno Hatta International Airport in Jakarta. His current visa expired on the 19th of July 2022, hence why Immigration officers had sufficient grounds to deport him. 

Napitupulu also confirmed that AA was breaking the conditions of his visa while working in Bali and not abiding by the law. He said ‘For foreigners who obtain a residence permit in Indonesia, it must be in accordance with the intent and purpose of being in Indonesia, providing benefits, and not endangering security and public order”

AA was deported back to Munich in Germany on the afternoon of Tuesday 9th August. He boarded the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines from Bali Ngurah Rai International Airport with flight number KL836 at 21.30 WITA. AA was closely escorted through Bali International Airport by six Denpasar Immigration Officers known as Rudenim.

This week Bali officials also deported a Malaysian man, known as HKS, after he finished his 10-year prison sentence at Kerobokan Prison in Kuta. He was arrested and jailed in 2012 for having methamphetamine with the intent to supply. He was sentenced to a 13-year stint in KBB but was released earlier than anticipated this week and sent to Kuala Lumpur. 

HKS was a construction worker in Kuala Lumpur who was lured into drug dealing by a man who approached him and offered him an income of $100 a day. HKS arrived in Bali via a visit to Bangkok where it is believed that he was given the methamphetamine to smuggle into Indonesia.

Since his passport expired during his prison sentence HKS was deported to Malaysia on emergency travel papers that were swiftly issued after his release by the Malaysian embassy in Jakarta.

Last week Bali officials deported two sisters from Morocco who has overstayed their visas by over 800-days and a Nigerian man who had overstayed by nearly three years. 

The Nigerian man, also only known publicly by his initials was deported because he overstayed his visa, and for scamming local women out of money. EEA conned many local women in Bali out of money by posing as a love interests who needed their financial support. He was deported to the Nigerian capital of Abuja on the 2nd of August 2022.