“Not Interested in the Small Fish”: Fiji’s Drug War Enters Dangerous New Territory as DPP Offers Immunity Deals Deputy DPP John Rabuku |  |
From left: Ana Rokolati, Travis Cheer, Iliesa Cokanasiga, Sunia Vakaloloma and Jonathan Pedro Hill outside the High Court in Ba on March 23, 2026.
| Granting immunity to lower-level or cooperating drug offenders in exchange for testimony against major traffickers is a recognised prosecutorial tool in many common law jurisdictions, including systems derived from British legal traditions. The real question for Fiji is not whether immunity should ever be used, but under what safeguards, for what level of offender, and in what type of case. In principle, there is a strong public interest argument for limited immunity arrangements where organised drug trafficking networks are involved. |  Jonathan Hill |
Large-scale narcotics enterprises rarely operate through a single offender. They function through layered hierarchies involving financiers, importers, transporters, distributors, corrupt facilitators, and street-level operatives. Without insider witnesses, prosecutors often struggle to penetrate the upper levels of those networks.
In that sense, immunity can be a legitimate investigative instrument.
A courier, intermediary, accountant, driver, or warehouse operator may possess direct evidence against the organisers who remain insulated from physical possession of the drugs themselves. In some cases, the only realistic path to dismantling a syndicate is to induce one participant to cooperate.
But immunity must never become arbitrary or politically selective.
The greatest danger is that the State ends up rewarding the most culpable actors while prosecuting only expendable figures lower down the chain. Public confidence collapses if ordinary citizens conclude that “big fish” receive deals while smaller offenders carry the full burden of punishment.
That is why any immunity framework in Fiji would require rigorous safeguards.
First, immunity should generally be reserved for testimony that is both necessary and independently corroborated. A conviction based solely on the unverified word of an accomplice is inherently dangerous. Courts across the common law world have repeatedly warned about the unreliability of incentivised witnesses who may exaggerate or fabricate evidence to save themselves.
Second, immunity should preferably target lesser participants in exchange for evidence against organisers, financiers, or corrupt officials. The proportionality principle matters. Granting full immunity to a syndicate leader merely to convict another syndicate leader would be difficult to justify morally or publicly.
Third, all immunity agreements should be transparent to the court and disclosed to the defence. The jury, or judge in a judge-alone trial, must know that a witness received a benefit from the prosecution. Otherwise the integrity of the proceedings is compromised.
Fourth, immunity should not become a substitute for proper police investigation. Fiji has periodically faced criticism over investigative capacity, chain-of-custody issues, witness management, and allegations of corruption within enforcement institutions. Immunity arrangements only work credibly where there is competent corroborative investigation through financial records, telecommunications data, surveillance, customs records, forensic evidence, and cross-border cooperation.
There is also a uniquely Fijian dimension to this debate.
Recent years have seen increasing public anxiety over allegations of transnational drug trafficking routes through Fiji, including concerns involving methamphetamine, cocaine trans-shipment, money laundering, and alleged corruption risks affecting ports, airports, and state institutions. In such an environment, prosecutors may well argue that extraordinary tools are necessary to dismantle sophisticated criminal networks.
However, Fiji must also guard against the perception that immunity deals become politicised, selectively granted, or used to manufacture testimony. In a small society where political, business, family, and social networks often overlap, the credibility of the DPP’s Office and law enforcement agencies becomes paramount.
Ultimately, the test should be pragmatic rather than ideological.
If granting immunity to a relatively minor participant enables authorities to expose the financiers, importers, corrupt facilitators, or international organisers behind a major trafficking enterprise, many would regard that as justified in the broader public interest.
But immunity should remain exceptional, tightly supervised, evidence-based, and proportionate. Otherwise it risks undermining the very legitimacy of the criminal justice system it is supposed to protect.
In that sense, immunity can be a legitimate investigative instrument.
A courier, intermediary, accountant, driver, or warehouse operator may possess direct evidence against the organisers who remain insulated from physical possession of the drugs themselves. In some cases, the only realistic path to dismantling a syndicate is to induce one participant to cooperate.
But immunity must never become arbitrary or politically selective.
The greatest danger is that the State ends up rewarding the most culpable actors while prosecuting only expendable figures lower down the chain. Public confidence collapses if ordinary citizens conclude that “big fish” receive deals while smaller offenders carry the full burden of punishment.
That is why any immunity framework in Fiji would require rigorous safeguards.
First, immunity should generally be reserved for testimony that is both necessary and independently corroborated. A conviction based solely on the unverified word of an accomplice is inherently dangerous. Courts across the common law world have repeatedly warned about the unreliability of incentivised witnesses who may exaggerate or fabricate evidence to save themselves.
Second, immunity should preferably target lesser participants in exchange for evidence against organisers, financiers, or corrupt officials. The proportionality principle matters. Granting full immunity to a syndicate leader merely to convict another syndicate leader would be difficult to justify morally or publicly.
Third, all immunity agreements should be transparent to the court and disclosed to the defence. The jury, or judge in a judge-alone trial, must know that a witness received a benefit from the prosecution. Otherwise the integrity of the proceedings is compromised.
Fourth, immunity should not become a substitute for proper police investigation. Fiji has periodically faced criticism over investigative capacity, chain-of-custody issues, witness management, and allegations of corruption within enforcement institutions. Immunity arrangements only work credibly where there is competent corroborative investigation through financial records, telecommunications data, surveillance, customs records, forensic evidence, and cross-border cooperation.
There is also a uniquely Fijian dimension to this debate.
Recent years have seen increasing public anxiety over allegations of transnational drug trafficking routes through Fiji, including concerns involving methamphetamine, cocaine trans-shipment, money laundering, and alleged corruption risks affecting ports, airports, and state institutions. In such an environment, prosecutors may well argue that extraordinary tools are necessary to dismantle sophisticated criminal networks.
However, Fiji must also guard against the perception that immunity deals become politicised, selectively granted, or used to manufacture testimony. In a small society where political, business, family, and social networks often overlap, the credibility of the DPP’s Office and law enforcement agencies becomes paramount.
Ultimately, the test should be pragmatic rather than ideological.
If granting immunity to a relatively minor participant enables authorities to expose the financiers, importers, corrupt facilitators, or international organisers behind a major trafficking enterprise, many would regard that as justified in the broader public interest.
But immunity should remain exceptional, tightly supervised, evidence-based, and proportionate. Otherwise it risks undermining the very legitimacy of the criminal justice system it is supposed to protect.
From the Skipper Drug Case to Fiji’s New Drug Kingpins: How I Warned of Narcotics Networks Four Decades Ago While Current Journalists Failed to Track the Cartels Now Running Amok in Fiji
As Editor-in-Chief of Fijileaks, I have watched with growing alarm how Fiji’s drug crisis has evolved from scattered trafficking operations into what increasingly appears to be a deeply entrenched transnational narcotics problem.
What disturbs me most is that many of the warning signs were identified decades ago, yet successive generations of journalists, institutions, and governments largely failed to pursue the networks, financiers, political protectors, and international cartels behind the trade with sustained investigative determination.
Between 1980 and 1983, following the July 1978 arrest at Nadi Airport of New Zealander Susan Florence Ray Rennie, who was travelling under the false passport name Christina Doreen Skipper, I spent three years investigating the so-called “Skippers” drug backgrounds, regional narcotics cartels, and Fiji’s growing use as a staging post for the movement of hard and soft drugs through the Pacific. Writing in the old Sunday Sun and Fiji Sun, I published an eight-part investigative series exposing how traffickers were exploiting Fiji’s geographic position, weak enforcement structures, and vulnerable border systems.
Those investigations came at personal cost. I received death threats and was violently assaulted by a notorious Suva drug peddler. Yet the investigations were regarded as so significant that the Fiji Customs and Excise Department later adopted my findings as a practical “Manual on Drugs and Smugglers” for police and customs officers.
Today, more than four decades later, Fiji’s drug problem appears far worse than anything many of us feared in the early 1980s. The tragedy is not simply that organised narcotics networks survived, but that much of Fiji’s journalism failed to maintain the long-term investigative pressure necessary to expose the financiers, importers, facilitators, and political connections behind the trade.
Too often, media attention faded after arrests, raids, or courtroom appearances, while the larger criminal structures remained hidden beneath the surface.
What disturbs me most is that many of the warning signs were identified decades ago, yet successive generations of journalists, institutions, and governments largely failed to pursue the networks, financiers, political protectors, and international cartels behind the trade with sustained investigative determination.
Between 1980 and 1983, following the July 1978 arrest at Nadi Airport of New Zealander Susan Florence Ray Rennie, who was travelling under the false passport name Christina Doreen Skipper, I spent three years investigating the so-called “Skippers” drug backgrounds, regional narcotics cartels, and Fiji’s growing use as a staging post for the movement of hard and soft drugs through the Pacific. Writing in the old Sunday Sun and Fiji Sun, I published an eight-part investigative series exposing how traffickers were exploiting Fiji’s geographic position, weak enforcement structures, and vulnerable border systems.
Those investigations came at personal cost. I received death threats and was violently assaulted by a notorious Suva drug peddler. Yet the investigations were regarded as so significant that the Fiji Customs and Excise Department later adopted my findings as a practical “Manual on Drugs and Smugglers” for police and customs officers.
Today, more than four decades later, Fiji’s drug problem appears far worse than anything many of us feared in the early 1980s. The tragedy is not simply that organised narcotics networks survived, but that much of Fiji’s journalism failed to maintain the long-term investigative pressure necessary to expose the financiers, importers, facilitators, and political connections behind the trade.
Too often, media attention faded after arrests, raids, or courtroom appearances, while the larger criminal structures remained hidden beneath the surface.
Fiji Police and the RFMF Must Re-Open the Room 233 ‘Weed’ File and Investigate How a Cabinet Minister Allegedly Obtained Drugs in a Melbourne Hotel
CONFIDENTIAL LETTER Exposes How People's Alliance Party Removed LYNDA TABUYA over 'SEX AND ILLICIT DRUG' Scandal in Melbourne
Letter Source: Grubsheet
The confidential letter dated 4 March 2024 reveals the formal internal decision by the People’s Alliance Party to remove Lynda Tabuya from her position as Deputy Party Leader following what the party itself described as a “sex and illicit drug scandal” arising during her official trip to the Parliament of Victoria in Melbourne between 21 and 23 August 2023.
Signed by Ratu Isoa Gavidi, Vice President of the People’s Executive Council (PEC), and countersigned by Party Leader and Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, the document states that the PEC had deliberated on recommendations from the People’s Management Committee before concluding that Tabuya’s “actions and conduct” had caused “severe and probably irreparable damage” to the image and reputation of the People’s Alliance.
The letter is significant for several reasons.
First, it demonstrates that the controversy was treated internally not merely as a personal indiscretion but as a matter involving allegations connected to illicit drugs during an official overseas trip undertaken in her capacity as a senior political figure and Cabinet Minister.
Second, the wording used by the party is unusually severe. The PEC concluded that her conduct violated the party’s vision, mission, and constitutional obligations expected of a Deputy Leader. Such language suggests the leadership believed the controversy had escalated beyond reputational embarrassment into a matter affecting public trust and party integrity.
Third, the letter raises lingering public interest questions that appear never to have been fully answered. If the governing party itself formally characterised the matter as involving an “illicit drug scandal”, critics argue that it is legitimate to ask whether Fiji’s law enforcement agencies ever adequately examined how the alleged drugs were obtained, whether any criminal conduct occurred, and whether the matter warranted deeper investigation beyond its political consequences.
The broader issue is not simply Tabuya’s removal from a party leadership role. Rather, it touches on a larger national concern about political accountability, elite behaviour, and the seriousness with which Fiji’s institutions confront allegations involving narcotics at a time when the country faces growing fears over drug trafficking and organised criminal influence.
The document therefore reopens a politically sensitive debate: whether Fiji’s response to allegations involving powerful public figures has matched the severity of the rhetoric used privately within the ruling party itself.
Signed by Ratu Isoa Gavidi, Vice President of the People’s Executive Council (PEC), and countersigned by Party Leader and Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, the document states that the PEC had deliberated on recommendations from the People’s Management Committee before concluding that Tabuya’s “actions and conduct” had caused “severe and probably irreparable damage” to the image and reputation of the People’s Alliance.
The letter is significant for several reasons.
First, it demonstrates that the controversy was treated internally not merely as a personal indiscretion but as a matter involving allegations connected to illicit drugs during an official overseas trip undertaken in her capacity as a senior political figure and Cabinet Minister.
Second, the wording used by the party is unusually severe. The PEC concluded that her conduct violated the party’s vision, mission, and constitutional obligations expected of a Deputy Leader. Such language suggests the leadership believed the controversy had escalated beyond reputational embarrassment into a matter affecting public trust and party integrity.
Third, the letter raises lingering public interest questions that appear never to have been fully answered. If the governing party itself formally characterised the matter as involving an “illicit drug scandal”, critics argue that it is legitimate to ask whether Fiji’s law enforcement agencies ever adequately examined how the alleged drugs were obtained, whether any criminal conduct occurred, and whether the matter warranted deeper investigation beyond its political consequences.
The broader issue is not simply Tabuya’s removal from a party leadership role. Rather, it touches on a larger national concern about political accountability, elite behaviour, and the seriousness with which Fiji’s institutions confront allegations involving narcotics at a time when the country faces growing fears over drug trafficking and organised criminal influence.
The document therefore reopens a politically sensitive debate: whether Fiji’s response to allegations involving powerful public figures has matched the severity of the rhetoric used privately within the ruling party itself.
Suspend the Cabinet Minister or Reveal the Identity: Fiji Cannot Afford Silence Over Alleged Positive Drug Test
