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.
