Phnom Penh/Bali: For the second time in a matter of weeks, Bali is reeling from a barbaric and seemingly targeted murder of a foreigner by suspected international enforcers.
The death of shady Dutchman Rene Pouw on Monday night has amplified fears that criminal gangs, including those from Australia, are increasingly comfortable using the holiday island as a setting for violence.
Pouw, 49, bled out in the courtyard of his Kerobokan villa on Monday night after two men, whom police believed to be Brazilian, turned up on a scooter and stabbed him repeatedly in the face, neck, limbs and body in front of his Indonesian girlfriend. The couple had just returned to the villa from walking the dogs, police said.
Like in the case of Ukrainian Igor Komarov, who was dumped in pieces into a Bali estuary last month, the suspected attackers left the country almost immediately, leaving police few options but to call Interpol.
Pouw had been living in Bali since 2024 and owned more than one undisclosed local business, police said. Dutch media reported he was a well-known drug figure in his homeland’s underworld.
Bali investigators did not believe his killing was an attempted robbery because the riders did not take his valuables. But the motive remained unknown, they said in Denpasar on Saturday. It was unclear if the suspects had any links with organised crime.
The Brazilians checked into $25-a-night accommodation in Kuta on March 15, more than a week before the murder, this masthead can reveal. According to the hotel’s owner, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his business and privacy, they rarely left their shared room other than to cook and eat.
“They packed light. They only had one backpack each,” the owner said. “They were supposed to stay a week longer, but on the 24th [the morning after Pouw’s death], one showed me on his mobile phone that his visa was done, and they needed to check out. They were very casual. They didn’t look suspicious or worried, just normal.”
He said the men spoke only Portuguese and the limited conversation with English-speaking hotel staff was through a translation app.
“If I didn’t know about this particular incident, I would have just thought they were normal tourists. They were friendly and kind. When they saw me, they would smile,” he said.
Police showed the owner photos of the murder weapon, which he said was a common kitchen knife.
In a recent interview with this masthead, before Pouw’s killing, Bali police spokesman Ariasandy said international criminal gangs had not set up in Bali.
Rather, the operatives in the cases of Melbourne man Zivan Radmanovic, and Komarov, along with two separate non-fatal hostage situations last year, were on fly-in, fly-out missions, taking advantage of Bali’s easy entry requirements and blending in with the millions of tourists who visited every year.
“When you open your doors, the good people come, but so do the bad,” Ariasandy said, referring to government efforts to revive tourism after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Only a fortnight before the attack on Pouw, three Australians were sentenced to jail in Indonesia – two for 16 years and one for 12 years – over last year’s shooting death in Bali of Radmanovic.
The two gunmen testified they were following orders from an unnamed boss in Australia to scare or bash a different man who was staying at the villa into paying back a debt. The victim was an unintended casualty of a botched mission, the court heard.
The jail terms handed down to the trio were shorter than what prosecutors had sought, devastating Radmanovic’s family.
“It’s a message globally [to criminals], ‘Hey, come to Bali’,” the family’s lawyer Sary Latief said after the sentencing.
Pouw’s girlfriend, 30, told police one of the killers was dressed in the uniform of a motorbike taxi company – the same disguise used by the Australian gunmen in Radmanovic’s murder – while the other was wearing an orange shirt, as if he were a passenger.
She and Pouw had seen the men on the bike a short time earlier during their walk and had thought nothing of them, police said.
Investigators have requested Interpol red notices for the Brazilian men, as they did when Komarov’s killers fled Indonesia. The notices for those men have recently been published, showing them to be three Ukrainians, two Russians and a Kazakhstani.
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Zach Hope is South-East Asia correspondent. He is a former reporter at the Brisbane Times.Connect via email.
Amilia Rosa is assistant Indonesia correspondent.Connect via X.