Builder has taken our money and not completed villa

Hi I’m new to the forum,

im wanting advice on what to do when a Balinese friend has extorted money from us after a 15 yr friendship. He’s a builder who started our villa (we purchased leasehold) and stopped working after 2 yrs of us coming back and forth with little progress. He got it to about 40% completion after 2 yrs and so we went back and employed a new builder who has been fantastic and now we at 80% completion after 2 months solid work. Many mistakes were made that had to be rectified. Main roof not built safely, leaking pool etc.

The builder has admitted to not completing the job and owing us just under $40k Aus, for money we had given and repairs to existing building. I’ve just returned back to Australia after being there for 10 days to check build and have meetings with original builder who is stalling on repaying debt he has taken responsibility for. The excuses and stalling has got us to a point where we need the money back to finish the job. What can we do to legally apply pressure to the guy to repay. He has 2 land certificates belonging to family that he says he can sell or get a loan against to repay us but at each meeting there is another excuse as to why it can’t happen. Constantly pushing for more time. Please advice on best way to handle this. We have many Balinese friends who are also trying to help us but we’ve been told to keep police out of the matter due to corruption being foreigners.

Should this be settled through his local bangga or is there another legal way?  Any advice greatly appreciated. Best regards, kimberley