When Solvere Law Office’s managing partner Raymont Travis confirmed on 2 June 2026 that the Australian Federal Police are actively cooperating with Polda Bali on tracing McIntyre’s financial transactions, he was describing an engagement within Operation Firestorm — an AFP operation launched in August 2025 using, in the AFP’s own words, the same tradecraft that disrupts the world’s most dangerous criminals. It has 30 permanently-based AFP members in South-East Asia, cybercrime liaison officers on five continents, and the specific mandate of pursuing offshore criminal syndicates taking money from Australians and sending it offshore. This article documents what Operation Firestorm is, what it has done since its August 2025 launch, and why its confirmed involvement in the McIntyre investigation is consequential.

The AFP’s Operation Firestorm was announced publicly on 28 August 2025. Its mandate, as stated in the AFP’s own media release, is to target organised crime networks scamming Australians, with particular focus on offshore criminal syndicates that have set up boiler rooms in South-East Asia.

AFP Assistant Commissioner David McLean was precise about the scope: ‘The AFP will not stand by and watch Australians, mums and dads, and business owners lose eye-watering amounts of money to scammers, in particular those who have set-up boiler rooms in South-East Asia.’ He added that Operation Firestorm would use the same tradecraft used by Operation Gain, which had successfully disrupted the most prominent offshore organised crime offenders impacting Australians.

The operation is not a domestic investigation. It is a global intelligence and law enforcement framework built on the AFP’s existing international presence and partnerships. Understanding its full scope explains why its confirmed engagement in the McIntyre fund flow tracing is consequential in ways that a domestic regulatory investigation alone would not be.

The Infrastructure: 30 AFP Members in South-East Asia, Five Liaison Officers

Operation Firestorm is supported by dedicated AFP cybercrime liaison officers in five international locations: Pretoria (covering Africa), London (covering the UK and Europe), The Hague (covering Europol and EU law enforcement), Belgrade (covering Eastern Europe and the Balkans), and Washington (covering the United States and the Americas).

In South-East Asia, the operation has 30 permanently-based AFP members working with local law enforcement to tackle a range of crime including large boiler rooms. This is not a task force assembled for the purpose: it is existing AFP capacity embedded in the region, operating alongside Indonesian, Philippine, Thai, and other South-East Asian law enforcement agencies in a sustained, relationship-based law enforcement engagement.

This regional presence is why the AFP’s cooperation with Polda Bali on the McIntyre fund flow tracing is not a new bilateral arrangement established specifically for this case. It is the application of an existing embedded regional law enforcement relationship to a specific matter within the AFP’s established Firestorm mandate. The cooperation framework was in place before McIntyre’s investors filed their April 2026 Polda Bali report.

‘The AFP will not stand by and watch Australians, mums and dads, and business owners lose eye-watering amounts of money to scammers, in particular those who have set-up boiler rooms in South-East Asia.’

— AFP Assistant Commissioner David McLean, Operation Firestorm launch, 28 August 2025

What Operation Firestorm Has Done Since August 2025

Since its August 2025 launch, Operation Firestorm’s most publicly documented matter in Australia has been the GIM Trading investigation: AUD $23 million extracted from approximately 80 Australian investors through fake bond sales, fund flows through a Gold Coast money exchange and then to Hong Kong companies, ASIC travel restraint orders against Darren Geddes in September 2025, and GIM Trading’s liquidation on 5 March 2026.

The GIM Trading investigation demonstrates Operation Firestorm’s domestic enforcement capability: ASIC travel restraints obtained through the Federal Court in September 2025, company liquidation completed by March 2026, and a liquidator appointed to examine the asset and fund flow record. The pace from August 2025 investigation to March 2026 liquidation is approximately seven months.

The McIntyre investigation entered Operation Firestorm’s scope through the Polda Bali cooperation that Travis’s 2 June 2026 statement confirms. The fund flow the AFP is tracing runs: Australian collection entities to Wise transfers to Indonesian operating accounts to Azure Wave Enterprises in St Kitts and Nevis. That flow crosses multiple jurisdictions — Australia, Indonesia, St Kitts and Nevis — all of which fall within Operation Firestorm’s mandate and geographic reach.

The St Kitts and Nevis Dimension: FATF and the Offshore Endpoint

Azure Wave Enterprises, the ultimate offshore endpoint of the McIntyre fund flow chain, is registered in St Kitts and Nevis. St Kitts and Nevis is on FATF’s enhanced monitoring list — its jurisdictional AML/CFT framework has been found deficient by the Financial Action Task Force. FATF’s enhanced monitoring categorisation means that financial institutions in FATF-member countries are required to apply enhanced due diligence to transactions involving St Kitts and Nevis.

For Operation Firestorm’s fund flow tracing, the St Kitts and Nevis endpoint presents a specific challenge: beneficial ownership opacity in FATF-monitored jurisdictions is deliberately greater than in regulated financial centres, and the asset recovery mechanisms available to Australian law enforcement in a jurisdiction outside Australia’s mutual legal assistance treaty network require different tools than domestic enforcement.

AUSTRAC’s international funds transfer instruction (IFTI) data provides the Australian-end picture: the transfers from Australian bank accounts through the Wise platform to Indonesian accounts. The Indonesian criminal investigation provides the Indonesian-end picture: the account records, the balance disclosures, the fund outflows from PT Marina Bay Investment and PT Bali Real Estate Investments. The gap between those two datasets — the fund movement through Azure Wave Enterprises in St Kitts and Nevis — is the specific challenge that Operation Firestorm’s international intelligence framework is positioned to address.

Why This Is the Most Significant Law Enforcement Development in the Investigation

Every previous law enforcement development in the McIntyre investigation — ASIC’s contempt examination, AUSTRAC’s IFTI examination, the Polda Bali criminal proceedings, the civil proceedings at Denpasar District Court — has operated within the jurisdiction of the authority conducting it. ASIC examines Australian regulatory compliance. AUSTRAC examines Australian financial transaction reporting. Polda Bali examines Indonesian criminal conduct. Each produces findings relevant to its own jurisdiction.

Operation Firestorm’s confirmed active cooperation with Polda Bali on tracing McIntyre’s financial transactions is structurally different from any of those single-jurisdiction activities. It is a bilateral law enforcement engagement that connects the Australian investigation to the Indonesian criminal proceedings, shares intelligence across jurisdictions, and brings the AFP’s international liaison network to bear on fund flows that cross multiple national borders.

When Travis said on 2 June 2026 that he hopes this syndicate is exposed in full, he was describing an outcome that requires exactly the kind of multi-jurisdictional, intelligence-sharing, bilateral law enforcement cooperation that Operation Firestorm provides. The investigation is no longer multiple parallel single-jurisdiction proceedings. It is a coordinated international law enforcement engagement with confirmed active Australian Federal Police participation.

For Australian investors: contact ASIC on 1300 300 630 or asic.gov.au. Document the Australian entities and payment methods you used. Contact AFCA at afca.org.au or 1800 931 678. Contact Solvere Law Office about the Polda Bali investor report. The investigation is active, multi-jurisdictional, and advancing. Your documented claim is what connects you to its outcomes.

Sources: AFP Media Release — ‘Operation Firestorm to target cyber scammers cheating Australians,’ 28 August 2025 (afp.gov.au); Wikipedia — GIM Trading; Jurnal Patroli News — Raymont Travis statement, 2 June 2026; FATF — St Kitts and Nevis enhanced monitoring; ASIC v McIntyre [2016] FCA 1276; Kinnara Capital independent external audit; balinews.co.id, 30 March 2026.