 |  John O’Connor (left), and Daniel Whippy in court |
The front-page of Saturday’s Fiji Times and Sunday’s Fiji Sun showed a remarkable picture: two senior figures in the business community on the footsteps of court who, between them, had once commanded Fiji rugby and whose influence and vote within the international game had seen them feted and applauded wherever they went. They left the magistrates’ court each on $10,000 bail having been charged by FICAC under Sections 45 and 139 of the Crimes Act of 2009.
Former FRU chief executive John O’Connor and former FRU deputy chairman Daniel Whippy appeared in front of the Suva Magistrate’s Court on Friday to answer allegations of amending a warehouse fire report for the purpose of gain. The charges relate to O’Connor’s separate role as chairman of the National Fire Authority and Whippy’s day job as a director of W R Carpenters (South Pacific) Pte. Limited.
Neither the Times nor Sun’s reporting indicated whether a plea was taken.
Properties belonging to Carpenters have suffered a number of high-profile fires: Morris Hedstrom’s supermarket in downtown Suva was severely damaged in December 2005; MH in Labasa in May 2009; MH Nadi was destroyed in May 2013; MH in Nabua in October 2015, and then there was the MH warehouse fire in Walu Bay in 2018 which is the subject of the current FICAC charges.
In terms of Fiji rugby, O’Connor was appointed CEO of the FRU in February 2016, leaving his job as CEO of the NFA to take up the equivalent position at Rugby House. He served until abruptly resigning in January last year, six months after three colleagues in Valekau’s finance section were terminated and O’Connor took voluntary leave.
Whippy was elected to the FRU board in 2013, nominated by the Suva Rugby Union, and served right the way through to April last year when all directors were removed after the Government takeover of the FRU that resulted in Fiji’s suspension from World Rugby’s decision-making Council. Whippy would have been one of the board members to confirm O’Connor’s appointment, after the previous CEO Radrodro Tabualevu, son of the legendary rugby coach Inoke, quit in late 2015.
The figure linking O’Connor and Whippy’s Fiji rugby journey was Francis Kean, the brother-in-law of former Fiji prime minister and 2006 coup leader Frank Bainimarama. Kean was chairman of the NFA from 2012 when O’Connor was CEO and it was Kean’s Suva Rugby Union that nominated Whippy in 2013 to the FRU board. When Kean quit the NFA’s chairman role, the chairmanship went to O’Connor.
Fijileaks has constantly raised the spectre of corruption, self-dealing and nepotism within the FRU when Bainimarama served as the body’s president. The FRU’s constitution gave the country’s prime minister the authority to appoint one member of the FRU’s board. Following the Bainimarama government’s takeover of the FRU in 2011 – when he threatened to withhold any government funding of the national team’s RWC campaign unless the elected board resigned – Bainimarama’s nominee was also allowed to be the FRU’s chairman by board members who were too timorous to say otherwise.
That meant, when Kean became chairman of the FRU in 2015, he was doubly-blessed with Bainimarama expectation – as his brother-in-law and also the person who nominated him onto the board in the first place.
When Kean arrived on the FRU board in 2015, Whippy was already a board member. The most pressing issue then was the foul play being committed by FRU naming sponsor Vodafone who had been given a sweetheart deal by the previous FRU chairman [and Bainimarama nominee] Filimoni Waqabaca. As Fijileaks explained it:
Following a boisterous Annual General Meeting in April [2015] in which more than a dozen binding resolutions were passed, all deeply critical of the Vodafone-led consortium, the FRU sent an angry 5-page letter to Vodafone Fiji in June. This followed the failure of the mobile phone company to account for any of the promised $5m promotional support and spend which it was contracted to deliver in 2014, the first year of the agreement. In subsequent correspondence Vodafone flat out refused to itemise any element of expenditure but claimed $5m had definitely been spent.
The Vodafone-led consortium sponsorship was announced in early 2014 by the then-chairman Filimone Waqabaca (who was the PM’s nominee to the Board between 2013-2014). He and Vodafone confirmed a value of $40m over five years. In reality the cash component was only a little over $3m per year, less than what rivals Digicel had offered, and the deal was VAT-inclusive, which knocked a further 20 percent off the cash income. More than $5m per year was contracted to be delivered by the consortium partners in the form of loosely worded promotional and marketing support and product.
The June 12 2015 letter sent in the name of the FRU chief executive officer Radrodro Tabualevu was emailed and hand-delivered to Vodafone CEO Pradeep Lal. In the letter the FRU gave Vodafone a 30-day termination notice on the controversial 5-year $40m sponsorship agreement, alleging that Vodafone was in breach for failing to account for more than $5 million worth of promised marketing support in the first year of the agreement.
The June 12 letter was copied to Frank’s brother-in-law Francis Kean, parachuted onto the Board by his brother-in-law as the Prime Minister’s nominee and once installed was elected as FRU chairman. As well as Kean, the Prime Minister himself was copied (as president of the Fiji Rugby Union), and Ajith Kodagoda as the chairman of ATH, the parent company of Vodafone Fiji Ltd. The last person copied was the FRU’s deputy chairman and director legal, the Maori legal activist Carl Ngaki-Cameron.
As Fijileaks reported, this legal crisis was averted by Vodafone paying for Bainimarama and his wife to attend the 2015 Rugby World Cup as guests of the FNPF-owned telecommunications company. The estimate was with business class airfares and best accommodation Vodafone’s ‘gift’ to the PM would have cost around $60,000. Once the arrangement was in place, the FRU abruptly stopped the pursuit of Vodafone and the sponsorship limped on unstructured for several more years.
Radrodro Tabualevu, who had led the skirmishing with Vodafone, was appalled and resigned before the end of 2015, ushering in the opportunity for O’Connor to be appointed as CEO in replacement.
It was the FRU, under O’Connor and Whippy, that stunned rugby fans by approving the creation of Fiji rugby competitions that championed the family names Bainimarama and Kean – the Bainimarama Shield for the four best-placed teams in second tier of provincial rugby and the Commander Francis Kean Shield for the annual match between the NFA and Correctional Services teams, modelled on the Sukuna Bowl between the Army and Police.
Prior to Bainimarama’s coup in 2006, neither Frank Bainimarama nor Francis Kean had any significant role in rugby so the creation of named trophies for both of them, when there are more illustrious names like Ratu Sir George Cakobau, Pio Bosco Tikoisuva, Ilaitia Tuisese and Waisale Serevi yet to honoured, pointed to the culture of fear and masipolo that characterised Rugby House’s operations.
In terms of The Fiji Sun’s reporting said ‘that between January 1 and September 28, 2018, in Suva, O’Connor, while being employed as the chair of the NFA board, directed his officers to amend the findings on the Fire Investigation Report which occurred on April 8, 2018, at the Morris Hedstrom warehouse located at Walu Bay for the purpose of gain. Whippy, while holding the role of director of W R Carpenters (South Pacific) PTE Limited during the same period, allegedly counselled O’Connor for the commissioning of the same offense
‘Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’
Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson
Former FRU chief executive John O’Connor and former FRU deputy chairman Daniel Whippy appeared in front of the Suva Magistrate’s Court on Friday to answer allegations of amending a warehouse fire report for the purpose of gain. The charges relate to O’Connor’s separate role as chairman of the National Fire Authority and Whippy’s day job as a director of W R Carpenters (South Pacific) Pte. Limited.
Neither the Times nor Sun’s reporting indicated whether a plea was taken.
Properties belonging to Carpenters have suffered a number of high-profile fires: Morris Hedstrom’s supermarket in downtown Suva was severely damaged in December 2005; MH in Labasa in May 2009; MH Nadi was destroyed in May 2013; MH in Nabua in October 2015, and then there was the MH warehouse fire in Walu Bay in 2018 which is the subject of the current FICAC charges.
In terms of Fiji rugby, O’Connor was appointed CEO of the FRU in February 2016, leaving his job as CEO of the NFA to take up the equivalent position at Rugby House. He served until abruptly resigning in January last year, six months after three colleagues in Valekau’s finance section were terminated and O’Connor took voluntary leave.
Whippy was elected to the FRU board in 2013, nominated by the Suva Rugby Union, and served right the way through to April last year when all directors were removed after the Government takeover of the FRU that resulted in Fiji’s suspension from World Rugby’s decision-making Council. Whippy would have been one of the board members to confirm O’Connor’s appointment, after the previous CEO Radrodro Tabualevu, son of the legendary rugby coach Inoke, quit in late 2015.
The figure linking O’Connor and Whippy’s Fiji rugby journey was Francis Kean, the brother-in-law of former Fiji prime minister and 2006 coup leader Frank Bainimarama. Kean was chairman of the NFA from 2012 when O’Connor was CEO and it was Kean’s Suva Rugby Union that nominated Whippy in 2013 to the FRU board. When Kean quit the NFA’s chairman role, the chairmanship went to O’Connor.
Fijileaks has constantly raised the spectre of corruption, self-dealing and nepotism within the FRU when Bainimarama served as the body’s president. The FRU’s constitution gave the country’s prime minister the authority to appoint one member of the FRU’s board. Following the Bainimarama government’s takeover of the FRU in 2011 – when he threatened to withhold any government funding of the national team’s RWC campaign unless the elected board resigned – Bainimarama’s nominee was also allowed to be the FRU’s chairman by board members who were too timorous to say otherwise.
That meant, when Kean became chairman of the FRU in 2015, he was doubly-blessed with Bainimarama expectation – as his brother-in-law and also the person who nominated him onto the board in the first place.
When Kean arrived on the FRU board in 2015, Whippy was already a board member. The most pressing issue then was the foul play being committed by FRU naming sponsor Vodafone who had been given a sweetheart deal by the previous FRU chairman [and Bainimarama nominee] Filimoni Waqabaca. As Fijileaks explained it:
Following a boisterous Annual General Meeting in April [2015] in which more than a dozen binding resolutions were passed, all deeply critical of the Vodafone-led consortium, the FRU sent an angry 5-page letter to Vodafone Fiji in June. This followed the failure of the mobile phone company to account for any of the promised $5m promotional support and spend which it was contracted to deliver in 2014, the first year of the agreement. In subsequent correspondence Vodafone flat out refused to itemise any element of expenditure but claimed $5m had definitely been spent.
The Vodafone-led consortium sponsorship was announced in early 2014 by the then-chairman Filimone Waqabaca (who was the PM’s nominee to the Board between 2013-2014). He and Vodafone confirmed a value of $40m over five years. In reality the cash component was only a little over $3m per year, less than what rivals Digicel had offered, and the deal was VAT-inclusive, which knocked a further 20 percent off the cash income. More than $5m per year was contracted to be delivered by the consortium partners in the form of loosely worded promotional and marketing support and product.
The June 12 2015 letter sent in the name of the FRU chief executive officer Radrodro Tabualevu was emailed and hand-delivered to Vodafone CEO Pradeep Lal. In the letter the FRU gave Vodafone a 30-day termination notice on the controversial 5-year $40m sponsorship agreement, alleging that Vodafone was in breach for failing to account for more than $5 million worth of promised marketing support in the first year of the agreement.
The June 12 letter was copied to Frank’s brother-in-law Francis Kean, parachuted onto the Board by his brother-in-law as the Prime Minister’s nominee and once installed was elected as FRU chairman. As well as Kean, the Prime Minister himself was copied (as president of the Fiji Rugby Union), and Ajith Kodagoda as the chairman of ATH, the parent company of Vodafone Fiji Ltd. The last person copied was the FRU’s deputy chairman and director legal, the Maori legal activist Carl Ngaki-Cameron.
As Fijileaks reported, this legal crisis was averted by Vodafone paying for Bainimarama and his wife to attend the 2015 Rugby World Cup as guests of the FNPF-owned telecommunications company. The estimate was with business class airfares and best accommodation Vodafone’s ‘gift’ to the PM would have cost around $60,000. Once the arrangement was in place, the FRU abruptly stopped the pursuit of Vodafone and the sponsorship limped on unstructured for several more years.
Radrodro Tabualevu, who had led the skirmishing with Vodafone, was appalled and resigned before the end of 2015, ushering in the opportunity for O’Connor to be appointed as CEO in replacement.
It was the FRU, under O’Connor and Whippy, that stunned rugby fans by approving the creation of Fiji rugby competitions that championed the family names Bainimarama and Kean – the Bainimarama Shield for the four best-placed teams in second tier of provincial rugby and the Commander Francis Kean Shield for the annual match between the NFA and Correctional Services teams, modelled on the Sukuna Bowl between the Army and Police.
Prior to Bainimarama’s coup in 2006, neither Frank Bainimarama nor Francis Kean had any significant role in rugby so the creation of named trophies for both of them, when there are more illustrious names like Ratu Sir George Cakobau, Pio Bosco Tikoisuva, Ilaitia Tuisese and Waisale Serevi yet to honoured, pointed to the culture of fear and masipolo that characterised Rugby House’s operations.
In terms of The Fiji Sun’s reporting said ‘that between January 1 and September 28, 2018, in Suva, O’Connor, while being employed as the chair of the NFA board, directed his officers to amend the findings on the Fire Investigation Report which occurred on April 8, 2018, at the Morris Hedstrom warehouse located at Walu Bay for the purpose of gain. Whippy, while holding the role of director of W R Carpenters (South Pacific) PTE Limited during the same period, allegedly counselled O’Connor for the commissioning of the same offense
‘Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’
Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson
