A senior official at Indonesia's Directorate General of Immigration yesterday said that no officer had stopped Australian model Tegan Martin from boarding her flight back to her country last week.
The statement was in response to reports from foreign news outlets that Martin, who was crowned Miss Universe Australia in 2014, had been "stranded in Bali" due to her damp passport.
According to a report from news.com.au published on Friday, it all started from Martin's Instagram story, in which she shared a photo of her passport with the words: "Wasn't allowed on my flight due to this water mark in the corner of my passport. Has this happened to anyone else?"
In a follow-up video, also uploaded on her story, Martin reportedly told her followers that she will be "in Bali a little bit longer than expected," adding how, based on the responses she received from her previous story, "it looks like this has happened to a few people," according to The Sun.
However, Indonesian Immigration Director General Ronny F. Sompie disputed the reports yesterday in a press release. Ronny noted that Martin did arrive in Indonesia on the evening of June 17, but that the Indonesian Immigration did not conduct an immigration inquiry when she was about to leave the country.
"... So it can be confirmed that she was not prohibited or delayed from boarding her flight by immigration officers," Ronny said, as quoted by Detik.
He suspected that Martin might have been told about the delay while she was checking in for her flight, as opposed to during passport check.
"I can confirm that this whole thing might have merely been an effort to build a negative perception about immigration in Bali," Ronny said.
Just yesterday, Martin posted a photo from her trip to Bali, though she captioned it as a throwback.
In addition, a post on her Instagram story would seem to confirm that the 26-year-old has indeed returned to her home country; it was accompanied by the words "why so cold Aus."