A second British tourist is facing a possible death sentence, as he stands trial on charges of drug smuggling. Piran Ezra Wilkinson, 48, from Chichester, West Sussex, is accused of trafficking 1.3 kilograms of cocaine with a street value of £300,000 into Bali in Indonesia.
The island is hugely popular with foreign visitors, attracting a record 16.4 million tourists last year. The property manager is charged with two counts of possessing Class A drugs and one count of being involved in the sale of drugs. If found guilty, the 48-year-old could face a firing squad, alongside fellow Brit Kial Robinson.
Robinson, 29, of Littlehampton, West Sussex, appeared in a Bali court last week on three similar charges of smuggling cocaine.
The court heard that Wilkinson was arrested by police in a sting operation at a luxury villa near Canggu on September 4.
“He was arrested at 2.30am after receiving two plastic packages containing cocaine with a total weight of 1,343.67 grams gross or 1,321 grams net,” the Indonesian prosecutor Made Dipa Umbara said.
The suspect was lured out of the villa by Robinson, who knocked on his door to deliver the drugs as previously arranged. Wilkinson was unaware that Robinson had been taken into custody at Bali’s airport the previous night.
Custom officials swooped after he was discovered to be carrying 1.32kg of cocaine in his Samsonite backpack.
Robinson had flown to Bali via Istanbul from Barcelona and told police that Wilkinson had planned the operation along with another man called Santos.
He claimed he had been offered £2,280 in cryptocurrency to cover his travel costs to Indonesia, and was promised a further £3,600 once the job was completed.
Indonesia is fast becoming a hotspot for the cocaine trade, with street prices for the drug fetching higher prices than in London and Amsterdam.
Just 250 grams of cocaine can reportedly net a dealer about £50,000 in Bali rather than £6,000 in either of those two western cities.
Indonesia’s National Narcotics Agency (BNN) recently admitted that Bali is now a serious destination for international drug trafficking.
