DENPASAR: The Denpasar District Court in Bali has sentenced 35 Indian nationals to between two and two-and-a-half years in prison for running an online gambling operation from the island.
“The defendants have been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of violating Article 426 of the Indonesian Criminal Code on online gambling,” presiding judge Putu Gde Novyartha said during a hearing on Wednesday (Oct 7).
The sentences were lighter than the four to five years in prison sought by prosecutors. The court also ordered the defendants to be deported to India after serving their sentences and barred them from returning to Indonesia, Novyartha said.
The judges cited the defendants’ involvement in transnational crime and their actions against the government’s efforts to eradicate online gambling as aggravating factors.
“The defendants acted against the Indonesian government’s programme to eradicate online gambling. Their actions were part of a transnational crime,” Novyartha said.
As mitigating factors, the court considered that the defendants had admitted their offences and promised not to commit similar crimes in the future, he said. All 35 Indian nationals were arrested by a Bali Police cybercrime team at two villas in Badung regency in February.
Investigators said the defendants had different roles in the online gambling operation, including processing deposits and withdrawals and promoting gambling websites on social media.
The indictment said the operation ran at least seven online gambling websites, with transactions conducted in Indian rupees.
The defendants told the court they had been victims of international human trafficking, saying they were recruited in India through employment agencies and promised legitimate jobs in Bali as data-entry staff and security guards.
They said they had been promised monthly salaries of between Rp 14 million (US$233) and Rp 15 million. But after arriving in Bali, they said they were instead instructed to work for the online gambling operation.
Ten of the 35 defendants said they had received only Rp 4 million to Rp 5 million in payments, while the remaining 25 said they had not received any salary before their arrests.
Concerns are growing that online gambling and cyber-scam operations once concentrated in parts of mainland South-East Asia, including Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, are spreading to other parts of the region as authorities step up crackdowns, with a series of recent raids highlighting Indonesia’s emergence as a new target for such operations.
Last month, immigration officials arrested five foreign nationals from China and Vietnam suspected of involvement in an international online gambling syndicate in Tangerang, Banten.
In early May, police arrested 321 foreign nationals at Hayam Wuruk Plaza Tower, an office building in Jakarta’s busy Hayam Wuruk commercial district, over alleged involvement in online gambling operations.
The group comprised 228 Vietnamese nationals, 57 Chinese nationals, 13 from Myanmar, 11 from Laos, five from Thailand, three from Cambodia and three from Malaysia, according to police.
After further investigation, the National Police named 287 of the foreigners as suspects, while the remaining 34 were handed over to immigration authorities for deportation over immigration violations. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
