How Russian crime pervades holiday hotspots Bali, Goa and Pattaya, from drug dealing to fraud to the sex trade, and why they often get away with it

The alleyway is like thousands of others in Bali, power lines dangling, yellow-white frangipani flowers creeping along the brickwork, but here, a wanted poster is stuck to the wall, and not one of local suspects but of a couple of Caucasians.

The first mugshot is of a man in his 30s with a thin patch of blond hair. The second is of a woman of about the same age with a sharp brown bob. “Immigration of Ngurah Rai. Most Wanted,” the poster declares. “Andrei Kovalenka Alias Andrew Ayer and Ekaterina Trubkina. Russian nationals.”

Kovalenka had just completed an 18-month sentence at Bali’s notorious Kerobokan Prison for possession of more than half a kilogram of hashish, and had been moved to an immigration detention centre, pending deportation to Russia over an arrest warrant for unspecified charges shared on Interpol’s red notice list when Trubkina managed to track him down and somehow bust him out.

The couple spent two weeks on the lam in February before they were discovered at a villa, just around the corner from this alleyway adorned with their mugshots, on the fringe of Bali’s surf and nightlife hub of Canggu. In March, Trubkina was deported and Kovalenka was extradited.

Indonesia’s borders have been closed since April 1, 2020, and yet hundreds of thousands of tourists have found shelter in Canggu during the pandemic, many by paying Balinese immigration agents to get them into the country on social visas – a legal loophole closed in July, when Indonesia briefly became the global epicentre of the pandemic, but that has now opened again.

These tourists came from the Americas, Europe and parts of Africa, but the largest country of origin, accounting for 67,491 arrivals in 2020, according to Statistics Indonesia, was Russia.