By Riley Walter

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Pratama, whose Bondi beauty salon, Beauty Pavilion, was allegedly purchased with the proceeds of crime, left Australia for Vietnam a week after detectives searched the home of one of his business partners in December 2024, and is believed to be living in Indonesia. A warrant for his arrest was issued this month.

In July, detectives arrested Li, 38, in the $18 million penthouse of the Crown’s residential tower in Barangaroo, where he had been living for about a year. He was charged with 87 offences, including knowingly directing the activities of a criminal group and dealing with the proceeds of crime. His alleged fellow syndicate ringleader, Yizhe “Tony” He, was charged with 107 offences.

By the time detectives arrested Nurkianto and Karliana in early August, they had spent months investigating the syndicate, dubbed the Penthouse Syndicate because of Li’s base of operations at the time of his arrest, and piecing together the couple’s wealth.

“From our profiling of them, they can’t afford to have $1 million worth of goods in their home, and they definitely can’t afford to have $15 million worth of property that they’re negative gearing through tax,” Gordon Arbinja, commander of the financial crimes squad, told the Herald.