Citizens Constitutional Forum fined $20,000 while CCF Chief Executive Officer Akuila Yabaki spared prison - instead he has been handed a three month sentence, suspended for 12 months for contempt of court

Fiji High Court judge Justice William Calanchini has fined CCF $20,000 while Akuila Yabaki has been convicted and handed a three month sentence, suspended for 12 months.
Justice Calanchini also said that Yabaki's sentence will be suspended upon the condition that Yabaki pays a $2,000 fine within 28 days. He also has to pay costs of $2,500 within 28 days to the Attorney General's Office.  Justice Calanchini also ruled that CCF has to arrange an apology directed to the judiciary of Fiji.  This is to be drafted and submitted within 28 days to the court for approval. Once the apology is approved, it has to be printed in the next edition of the CCF Newsletter, Tutaka.
In June State lawyer Ropate Green from the Attorney-General's Office had asked  Justice  Calanchini to jail  Yabaki for six months for contempt of court. Green asked that CCF be sentenced to pay a fine of no less than $100,000 and that its directors be ordered to enter into a good behaviour bond of $100,000 for a period of two years. He also submitted that the next issue of Tutaka carry a public apology to the court on its front page and that CCF pay indemnity costs "on a higher scale".
In the April 2012 edition of its Tutaka newsletter, CCF had published an article reporting the outcome of an investigation by the United Kingdom Law Society Charity on the independence of the judiciary in Fiji. The Attorney-General Aiyaz Khaiyum alleged that words in the article were a "scurrilous attack on the members of the judiciary thereby lowering or posing a real risk of lowering and undermining the authority of the judiciary and the court".

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In my judgment the contempt in the present case falls below the seriousness of the contempt involved in the 2008 decision of the High Court in Attorney-General of Fiji –v- Fiji Times Ltd and Others (unreported No.124 of 2008 delivered 22 January 2009). The reasons for this are the limited distribution of the newsletter and the less vitriolic language that constituted the contempt. - Judge Calanchini

The Second Respondent’s salary is $68,000.00 gross (but not including FNPF contributions) as Chief Executive Officer and that represents his only source of income. With his wife he jointly owns shares in Amalgamated Telecommunications Holdings worth about $10,000.00 and he has taken out a BSP Life Insurance Policy. The Second Respondent and his wife jointly own the family home at Colo-i-Suva - Judge Calanchini

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