My name is Mark Andrew Austin, my wife is Balinese, I used to operate a bespoke travel service for Bali and also owned an eco-friendly luxury villa resort on the north of the so called 'Paradise Island". I felt the need to publish my blog after years of abuse by the Indonesian state plus defamation and lies against me by some of the human garbage which inhabits one of the most corrupt and human rights abusing countries in the world. An island infamous for sheltering criminals on the run from the west and human abusers such as pedophiles as it is famous for being a cheap tropical vacation destination.
Like most people who get involved with Bali, it started off for me with a holiday. Having read up on the negatives of resort areas like Kuta, I decided to do "walkabout" around the island to find the real paradise. After a couple of trips from my native England, I started a part time hotel reservations "business" (dealing primarily with hotels I had "discovered" and loved) and travel forum in 1998. I have been very "vocal" about what I found and loved in Bali, but also equally about aspects of the island I disliked, reporting bad practices about certain Indonesian travel agents and about which hotels I felt offered appalling value. This put me in conflict with a number of hoteliers, agents and tourists; the later who felt the need to be devoted to and thereby stalwart defenders of certain hotels. For example, after having stayed at most of the so called luxury hotels in and learned the sordid history of Nusa Dua, I said then and I say now that anyone staying at one of these hotels is not staying in Bali, are getting poor value for their dollars and with it actually supporting the oppression of the Balinese people.
All was not bad, much was good, but the great was hard to find and I wanted to share everything with my fellow travelers. Unfortunately the Indonesian state via their very nasty, corrupt and human rights abusing police in Bali (e.g. Manfred Nowak, the senior UN human rights monitor has stated the Balinese police have shot and beaten people simply to torture them while in custody) has ensured I can no longer go to Bali to support the small bespoke Balinese businesses. So this blog is about the bad in Bali; at least some of the bad as there is so much.
After the 2002 terrorist bombings in Kuta and the economic blight afflicting the Balinese that ensued, I donated all of the money I made from my reservations business to some of the worst affected Balinese sent home without pay, redundancy or social security. After the 2004 terrorist bombings, days after I had opened a luxury villa resort, I provided free accommodation both at those villas and via my reservations site (using the commissions earned from the hotels) to bomb victims and their families; I believe I was the only accommodations provider and / or reservations site owner to do this, the other free accommodation for victims and their families being paid for by charities. And yet, somehow, a little group of people started calling me "nasty Mark"; I believe "Freud" says enough.
In 2002 I was unlawfully detained by the Balinese police and threatened with execution for being a spy! The British Embassy in Jakarta had to intervene to secure my and my passport's release. The police action was ordered by the then police chief himself, Budi Setywan, after an aggrieved business competitor (named in one of my previous travel agent scam warnings), Jack Daniels of Bali Discovery Tours filed a police "complaint" with Setywan about an email I had sent to a hotel, which was then broadcast to some of the Balinese tourism community by a well-intentioned third party. My email simply criticized airport security and police inaction in Bali after I made a trip to the island directly after the attack, in the hope something could be done to help remedy the situation. The police said this constituted spying and helping the terrorists as they would then know security was bad! A joke? Yes, but a very sick one.
After I left Bali I exercised my civil and human rights by publishing the facts of my unlawful detention, naming Jack Daniels as the complainant. Unfortunately for me I did not understand Indonesian law in that, although I was outside their jurisdiction when I wrote and published what I did, the Indonesian police and judiciary are so corrupt they receive money to hold extreme interpretations of the law, you need the permission of another person in Indonesia to say bad things about them (even if those things are true) or it is considered defamation, and finally libel is a criminal offense in Indonesia. So you can not say anything truthful about another (more influential) person which they do not like, or you will go to jail. So next time anyone publishes an account of how bad they thought their hotel was in Bali, they may want to remember that hotel can have them arrested for criminal libel if they ever return to the island! It is not likely to happen because of the bad publicity and business it would bring, but the fact remains it legally can happen and with it indicates what the people themselves of Indonesia have to endure.
From that time the Balinese police have set out, initially paid for with corruption money (bribes) from Jack Daniels, to "get" me. As I found out what they were doing, all of it totally unlawful, I published the facts and with that the Balinese police got involved against me personally. As I reported their unlawful acts, they grew increasingly determined to not just arrest and harm me, but recently also to kill me.
In 2004 armed Thai gangsters tried to kill me at our home in Phuket. I found out afterwards they had been paid for by my nasty business competitor in Bali after he received details from the Balinese police as to my whereabouts in Thailand. I also later found out how the Balinese police knew my whereabouts; they had placed an automated watch order against me with Interpol, claiming I was a suspected terrorist! The Thai immigration were then obliged to feed the regional Interpol HQ with my data, which was passed onto the Balinese police, who then gave it to the man who wanted to kill me. I truly believe if it were not for the kindness of a local police officer in Phuket I had come to know, I would now be dead. A police officer in Bali afterwards boasted about and showed the Interpol file on me to various people, plus stated that the then police chief Made Pastika, the current governor of Bali authorized the watch order after receiving $3000 USD as a corruption bribe / bung from Jack Daniels.
So my wife, young son and I fled to Europe where we now live and I continue to tell the world about what happened to me, and what goes on in Bali. Some friends in Indonesia asked me long ago why I simply did not pay the police to leave me alone and even take revenge on people like Daniels, but the fact is I am not prepared to pay a single cent to a bent Bali cop acting unlawfully against me. Yes, publishing the truth has cost me more money, but my conscience is clear and my standards / honour preserved. But this has cost me dearly, not just with the mafia law enforcement agency of Bali.
In harmony with the unlawful even criminal police actions against me, certain people in Bali have deemed it their place to "work" with Jack Daniels of Bali Discovery Tours and the police against me, because they do not like what I publish or rather what they claim I publish. The Balinese police have provided them with scans of my passport and even credit card details (which the police got from a hotel I stayed at) and these have been widely circulated on the Internet to try and intimidate me, to try and make sure I do not come back to Bali, Indonesia or even SE Asia, and to defraud me; thousands of dollars were stolen from my credit card using the information and passport scans provided by the Balinese police.
These people are all anti-Balinese. As I was no longer able to travel to Bali as Mark Andrew Austin to promote Balinese and Balinese friendly hotels, and because I was worried about the consequences of retaining a commercial operation for Bali, I turned my reservations business over to charitable work; that is every penny it (Travel Ethos) made from direct reservation commissions was paid directly by the hotels / villas to a children's charity in Bali. The "end of the line" came for me when one of the nasty people of Bali, Roy Thompson in Ubud, started publishing false statements that this charitable aspect was a con, that I was still taking the hotel commissions and in doing so was defrauding the charity. Despite the fact from early 2007 the hotels and villas only ever paid commissions earned by my reservations site directly to the charity's nominated bank account, and that it was only the needy children who benefited from the charity who would suffer economically from such malicious lies, the dregs of Bali deemed it acceptable to publish this hate in an attempt to get at me. And that is what Indonesia is all about, a cockroach of a country in which the parasites of society not just survive but thrive.
My name is Mark Andrew Austin, the so-called "Nasty Mark of Bali" and these are my blogs / substantiated stories about some of the human garbage that infests Bali. The people I name here claim I fabricated everything, that the police investigations against me never happened, that nothing wrong was done to me, that I am a mad hatter and made everything up. So here I show police documents and other evidence to prove what I say is the truth, and that there is sufficient evidence to expect those named here are investigated and even jailed, including several senior police officers past and present, including the Governor of Bali, Made Pastika.
Saturday 1 August 2009
Dr. John Cooke - Bali / California / France - Scum Bag
I say Dr. John Cooke of Bali, California and France "fame" is a defrauding scum bag. Please read the story here: Bali Children's Project.
My company arranged for thousands of dollars in donations to his "charity" which he directed go to his Balinese girlfriend's, the charity's operational manager's personal account "to save on bank charges". That money clearly never went to the charity / needy children. Thousands of dollars went to his bit of fluff in Bali.
Anyone think John Cooke is a good guy? So consider;
1) He has refused like a thief caught out to so much as reply to me about the problem.
2) The Bali Children's Project has not thanked me or the donors for the money; it appears the co-directors know what goes on and are probably involved in this / their own fraudulent scams themselves.
3) John Cooke refuses to provide proof that the money, thousands of dollars, went where it was intended.
4) John Cooke concocted a story for third parties that I had been asked to cease supporting the charity months before, though I never was and he can not show anything to substantiate this. In fact, at the time John Cooke now claims a termination letter was sent to me (no copy letter provided, no proof of posting provided, no signed for receipt - because I never received it of course, no reason for wanting me to stop getting the charity money, no explanation why John Cooke simply did not email me), I have an email from him thanking me for my work and gratefully approving a project I was working on to promote our relationship further.
5) Even if Cooke had sent me a termination letter, which he clearly did not, this does not explain why his girlfriend continued to accept donations for the charity into her bank account.
6) Dr. John Cooke, in order to try and cover his own nasty backside, to try and sustain his untenable pride and false piety, then went on to support someone who accused me of stealing the charity money for myself, when I could not as I am not in nor have an active bank account any more in Bali and the donations were paid directly to his "operational manager's" account. The money I / my UK company arranged for others to donate I could have taken for myself legally and legitimately anyway, as my company earned it (we got the people in Bali we earned it from to pay the Bali Children's Project instead, or so we thought), so why would I steal it?! I would not, it is crazy (especially as the facts are documented), but still, to be accused of stealing from a children's charity when I was actually financially supporting it tells you everything you really need to know about Dr. John Cooke and his friends.
If you want to contact him, Dr. John Cooke's published details are;
Château d'Alogny
86270 Lésigny-sur-Creuse
France
05 49 20 29 70
The Bali Children's Project
PO Box 171
Dutch Flat CA 95714
530 389-2167
After I filed a complaint against Dr. Cooke with the California Attorney General's office which clearly went nowhere because of the volume of complaints they receive about fraudulent charitable trusts in California (and possibly jurisdiction issues), I decided my last chance to have John Cooke face up privately for what he had done was to write to him and the Bali Children's Project in Bali warning I would publish the facts and name him as a fraudster if he did not reply. If there was any chance I could get the truth from Cooke and have the thousands of dollars I had donated go to where it was intended, this was the last one.
John Cooke received my letter and did not reply. I told him I would publish that he had deliberately engineered charity payments authorized by my UK company to go to his Balinese mistress instead, that he had defrauded the needy children of Bali, that he was a con man, a fraudster, a liar, a cheat, a thief, an abuser of children, a low life scum bag; John Cooke did not respond.
Dr. John Cooke of Bali, California and France; in any language, I say you are human garbage, have a bad day and a lousy life. May your insurance lapse and your "Chateau" burn down from a lightening strike, preferably with you in it.
My company arranged for thousands of dollars in donations to his "charity" which he directed go to his Balinese girlfriend's, the charity's operational manager's personal account "to save on bank charges". That money clearly never went to the charity / needy children. Thousands of dollars went to his bit of fluff in Bali.
Anyone think John Cooke is a good guy? So consider;
1) He has refused like a thief caught out to so much as reply to me about the problem.
2) The Bali Children's Project has not thanked me or the donors for the money; it appears the co-directors know what goes on and are probably involved in this / their own fraudulent scams themselves.
3) John Cooke refuses to provide proof that the money, thousands of dollars, went where it was intended.
4) John Cooke concocted a story for third parties that I had been asked to cease supporting the charity months before, though I never was and he can not show anything to substantiate this. In fact, at the time John Cooke now claims a termination letter was sent to me (no copy letter provided, no proof of posting provided, no signed for receipt - because I never received it of course, no reason for wanting me to stop getting the charity money, no explanation why John Cooke simply did not email me), I have an email from him thanking me for my work and gratefully approving a project I was working on to promote our relationship further.
5) Even if Cooke had sent me a termination letter, which he clearly did not, this does not explain why his girlfriend continued to accept donations for the charity into her bank account.
6) Dr. John Cooke, in order to try and cover his own nasty backside, to try and sustain his untenable pride and false piety, then went on to support someone who accused me of stealing the charity money for myself, when I could not as I am not in nor have an active bank account any more in Bali and the donations were paid directly to his "operational manager's" account. The money I / my UK company arranged for others to donate I could have taken for myself legally and legitimately anyway, as my company earned it (we got the people in Bali we earned it from to pay the Bali Children's Project instead, or so we thought), so why would I steal it?! I would not, it is crazy (especially as the facts are documented), but still, to be accused of stealing from a children's charity when I was actually financially supporting it tells you everything you really need to know about Dr. John Cooke and his friends.
If you want to contact him, Dr. John Cooke's published details are;
Château d'Alogny
86270 Lésigny-sur-Creuse
France
05 49 20 29 70
The Bali Children's Project
PO Box 171
Dutch Flat CA 95714
530 389-2167
After I filed a complaint against Dr. Cooke with the California Attorney General's office which clearly went nowhere because of the volume of complaints they receive about fraudulent charitable trusts in California (and possibly jurisdiction issues), I decided my last chance to have John Cooke face up privately for what he had done was to write to him and the Bali Children's Project in Bali warning I would publish the facts and name him as a fraudster if he did not reply. If there was any chance I could get the truth from Cooke and have the thousands of dollars I had donated go to where it was intended, this was the last one.
John Cooke received my letter and did not reply. I told him I would publish that he had deliberately engineered charity payments authorized by my UK company to go to his Balinese mistress instead, that he had defrauded the needy children of Bali, that he was a con man, a fraudster, a liar, a cheat, a thief, an abuser of children, a low life scum bag; John Cooke did not respond.
Dr. John Cooke of Bali, California and France; in any language, I say you are human garbage, have a bad day and a lousy life. May your insurance lapse and your "Chateau" burn down from a lightening strike, preferably with you in it.
Bali Children's Project FRAUD
I have put this warning about the Bali Children's Project off long enough; this Indonesian charity is like so many others; a fraud, a con.
I really did not want to publish in the hope I was wrong, that the management of the Bali Children's Project would show they had not stolen thousands of dollars donated by hotels in Bali (at my direction / bequest - commissions for bookings from my charitable reservations site) intended for the Balinese children they were meant to support. But the fact is, I can show the hotels had paid large sums of money (by Balinese standards) into the bank account of the operations manager, only for this money to be defrauded by John Cooke and his Balinese girlfriend, Kadek Liatini (yes, she is Bali Children's Project operations manager). I was informed about their relationship by a reliable confident in Bali and I have given both Cooke and Liatini the chance to deny it; I have also given them the chance to show they have not defrauded the money for themselves.
What follows is a concise summary of my dealings with John Cooke, Kadek Liatini and the Bali Children's Project, including you will note copied correspondence to other BCP directors such as Linda Moselle, so you can establish what I say as fact.
First, Dr. John Cooke's email reply to me setting up the arrangement;
Next, Kadek Liatini's response with her bank details (to be used for donations to the charity);
Yes, perhaps I was stupid to agree to get the hotels to pay into an individual's personal bank account not one registered to the charity, but John Cooke explained to me that the charity account was in the USA and therefore money would be lost in bank charges if it were sent there (from Bali hotels) and back again (to the Bali Children's Project), so I agreed.
Next I can show emails from hotels such as this one, Tegal Sari confirming they have sent payments of commissions due to my company to the operations manager's bank account as directed by me / my webmaster at the time. Tegal Sari in Ubud can be contacted to verify this of course, as can all the other hotels we have emails from stipulating they have paid money into Kadek Liatini's bank account;
Everything seemed to be fine, good in fact. I was happy in the belief the money my UK company earned from direct reservations in Bali was going where it was intended, Balinese children in need. I / we (my webmaster Andrew Stevens) had occasional contact with John Cooke, e.g. when we got some free advertising with the Bali Advertiser to support this effort;
Notice the date, late November 2007.
Then, in December of 2008 the very nasty Roy Thompson of Ubud started sending me emails, claiming I was defrauding the Bali Children's Project, that none of the money intended for the children was getting to them. He claimed the charity had not received anything from me (my company) or rather the hotels in Bali as they were meant to. He also claimed Dr. John Cooke had informed him that their lawyer in Bali had written to me late in 2007 demanding we remove any links to / connection with the Bali Children's Project. At first I just shrugged it off, but then when John Cooke did not reply to my emails I realized something was not right.
At first I asked Dr. Cooke to simply reply and deny the allegations. I heard through someone else he had repeated the allegation that a lawyer's letter had been sent to my company in the UK, as had been alleged by Roy Thompson. So I emailed John Cooke again, demanding he produce this letter and evidence it was sent / delivered because neither I nor my company received anything from them. In fact, I pointed out to John Cooke that in late November 2007 he had approved the Bali Advertiser project so how come, at the same time, it was now being alleged he had his lawyer in Bali write to me / my company to dissolve the arrangement? How come he did not simply email me? How come Kadek Liatini was continuing to accept money from the hotels?
Nothing, no answer, no proof of sending any such letter, no proof of receipt of any such letter, no copy of their alleged letter, no answer as to the money and where it had gone. When I checked the Bali Children's project web site's sponsorship page there was no mention of any of the money paid by hotels to their operations manager, no thank you to anyone for the thousands of dollars donated it was believed to the Bali Children's Project. At the same time, I received word from a credible source in Bali informing me John Cooke and Kadek Liatini were an item, that they were lovers and perhaps the money had been taken all along to support Dr. Cooke's Balinese mistress; this was not music to my ears. So I challenged John Cooke with this and again he refused to respond, so I then felt sure this was the reason. Especially in retrospect when I read the very strange and personal comments about Ms. Liatini on BCP's web site; "Kadek is a great asset as well as an excellent role model for the girls in the programs, having chosen a profession rather than early marriage and child-rearing".
I threatened legal action against John Cooke and BCP; still no response. So I did just that, I filed a complaint with the California Attorney General's Office against John Cooke's charitable foundation as it was him / them in California who had instructed me to get the hotels to pay into Kadek Liatini's bank account;
Regrettably it seems charity fraud is big business in California and I got a "We may investigate, we may not, we will not tell you" response listing the many reasons they would not investigate!
I tried to give BCP (the Bali Children's Project) every chance to show they had applied the money donated to them in good faith as it was meant to be, but they have declined to so much as reply; they have not even thanked the hotels for the money donated by them, so I am sure BCP are as bent as they come.
Of course the problem in Indonesia is that everything is so corrupt, there is so much fraud. Charities are not regulated, they do not have to produce accounts, and even when they do they are often very generic and not audited. Perhaps I should not have been so surprised, but I was, I was gutted. I wished I had simply taken the money for myself, as I was entitled. I had it go instead, I believed, to a children's charity only to be accused of defrauding them somehow, as if I could; the money was paid by hotels in Bali to Kadek Liatini's bank account on that island. If I wanted the money I could and would have just taken it as commissions to which I was entitled. But still, the accusation after I feel I did so much for the charity really, really hurt. Past that I felt and feel nothing but anger and disgust for what John Cooke has done, without so much as the decency of an explanation or apology.
So let me now write a blog page especially for Dr John Cooke Bali / California / France and hope he gets some good old fashioned Balinese karma from the publicity.
I really did not want to publish in the hope I was wrong, that the management of the Bali Children's Project would show they had not stolen thousands of dollars donated by hotels in Bali (at my direction / bequest - commissions for bookings from my charitable reservations site) intended for the Balinese children they were meant to support. But the fact is, I can show the hotels had paid large sums of money (by Balinese standards) into the bank account of the operations manager, only for this money to be defrauded by John Cooke and his Balinese girlfriend, Kadek Liatini (yes, she is Bali Children's Project operations manager). I was informed about their relationship by a reliable confident in Bali and I have given both Cooke and Liatini the chance to deny it; I have also given them the chance to show they have not defrauded the money for themselves.
What follows is a concise summary of my dealings with John Cooke, Kadek Liatini and the Bali Children's Project, including you will note copied correspondence to other BCP directors such as Linda Moselle, so you can establish what I say as fact.
First, Dr. John Cooke's email reply to me setting up the arrangement;
Next, Kadek Liatini's response with her bank details (to be used for donations to the charity);
Yes, perhaps I was stupid to agree to get the hotels to pay into an individual's personal bank account not one registered to the charity, but John Cooke explained to me that the charity account was in the USA and therefore money would be lost in bank charges if it were sent there (from Bali hotels) and back again (to the Bali Children's Project), so I agreed.
Next I can show emails from hotels such as this one, Tegal Sari confirming they have sent payments of commissions due to my company to the operations manager's bank account as directed by me / my webmaster at the time. Tegal Sari in Ubud can be contacted to verify this of course, as can all the other hotels we have emails from stipulating they have paid money into Kadek Liatini's bank account;
Everything seemed to be fine, good in fact. I was happy in the belief the money my UK company earned from direct reservations in Bali was going where it was intended, Balinese children in need. I / we (my webmaster Andrew Stevens) had occasional contact with John Cooke, e.g. when we got some free advertising with the Bali Advertiser to support this effort;
Notice the date, late November 2007.
Then, in December of 2008 the very nasty Roy Thompson of Ubud started sending me emails, claiming I was defrauding the Bali Children's Project, that none of the money intended for the children was getting to them. He claimed the charity had not received anything from me (my company) or rather the hotels in Bali as they were meant to. He also claimed Dr. John Cooke had informed him that their lawyer in Bali had written to me late in 2007 demanding we remove any links to / connection with the Bali Children's Project. At first I just shrugged it off, but then when John Cooke did not reply to my emails I realized something was not right.
At first I asked Dr. Cooke to simply reply and deny the allegations. I heard through someone else he had repeated the allegation that a lawyer's letter had been sent to my company in the UK, as had been alleged by Roy Thompson. So I emailed John Cooke again, demanding he produce this letter and evidence it was sent / delivered because neither I nor my company received anything from them. In fact, I pointed out to John Cooke that in late November 2007 he had approved the Bali Advertiser project so how come, at the same time, it was now being alleged he had his lawyer in Bali write to me / my company to dissolve the arrangement? How come he did not simply email me? How come Kadek Liatini was continuing to accept money from the hotels?
Nothing, no answer, no proof of sending any such letter, no proof of receipt of any such letter, no copy of their alleged letter, no answer as to the money and where it had gone. When I checked the Bali Children's project web site's sponsorship page there was no mention of any of the money paid by hotels to their operations manager, no thank you to anyone for the thousands of dollars donated it was believed to the Bali Children's Project. At the same time, I received word from a credible source in Bali informing me John Cooke and Kadek Liatini were an item, that they were lovers and perhaps the money had been taken all along to support Dr. Cooke's Balinese mistress; this was not music to my ears. So I challenged John Cooke with this and again he refused to respond, so I then felt sure this was the reason. Especially in retrospect when I read the very strange and personal comments about Ms. Liatini on BCP's web site; "Kadek is a great asset as well as an excellent role model for the girls in the programs, having chosen a profession rather than early marriage and child-rearing".
I threatened legal action against John Cooke and BCP; still no response. So I did just that, I filed a complaint with the California Attorney General's Office against John Cooke's charitable foundation as it was him / them in California who had instructed me to get the hotels to pay into Kadek Liatini's bank account;
Regrettably it seems charity fraud is big business in California and I got a "We may investigate, we may not, we will not tell you" response listing the many reasons they would not investigate!
I tried to give BCP (the Bali Children's Project) every chance to show they had applied the money donated to them in good faith as it was meant to be, but they have declined to so much as reply; they have not even thanked the hotels for the money donated by them, so I am sure BCP are as bent as they come.
Of course the problem in Indonesia is that everything is so corrupt, there is so much fraud. Charities are not regulated, they do not have to produce accounts, and even when they do they are often very generic and not audited. Perhaps I should not have been so surprised, but I was, I was gutted. I wished I had simply taken the money for myself, as I was entitled. I had it go instead, I believed, to a children's charity only to be accused of defrauding them somehow, as if I could; the money was paid by hotels in Bali to Kadek Liatini's bank account on that island. If I wanted the money I could and would have just taken it as commissions to which I was entitled. But still, the accusation after I feel I did so much for the charity really, really hurt. Past that I felt and feel nothing but anger and disgust for what John Cooke has done, without so much as the decency of an explanation or apology.
So let me now write a blog page especially for Dr John Cooke Bali / California / France and hope he gets some good old fashioned Balinese karma from the publicity.
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