Pacific Notes
Pacific Notes
It’s No Jest: Tonga’s Money Disappears
North Carolina’s Jesse Bogdonoff is a kind of “ah shucks” carpetbagger. “I’m a natural-born fool,” he says and with this qualification managed to convince Tonga’s King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV to part with at least US$26 million of the kingdom’s money.
Now Tonga is desperately looking for the money, which Bogdonoff moved into a suspect Nevada company that has disappeared, along with the money.
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It seems to have all been done the Tongan standard: flattery of the royal family who, unchecked by the parliament they control, treat the kingdom as their personal plaything.
It’s a simple story with a long trail that goes back to the mid-1980s, and one George Chen, a Taiwan-Chinese businessman, who like many before and since won the king’s ear with a get-rich-quick scheme. This one was to sell a special passport, which would have given holders a travel document but no right of abode in the kingdom. It was targeted at residents of Hong Kong who were fearful of the hand-over to China.
But the scheme hit a hitch when Australia, Fiji and New Zealand refused to recognize the passports. To overcome this Tonga then sold citizenship and passports as a package. Citizenship in Tonga comes with an entitlement to an allotment of land and to meet this Tonga even designated an empty island — vacant because it was an active volcano — into sections for the new citizens. In the end the Tonga Supreme Court ruled the citizenship sales illegal, so the noble and royal dominated assembly simply changed the constitution retroactively.
At the king’s direction Chen deposited the proceeds in a Bank of America account, nominally controlled by the Tonga Trust Fund (TTF). The king used some of it to buy himself a lavish house in San Francisco, but mostly the money sat in the account, yielding a steady interest above 7 percent.
At the bank was Bogdonoff. A Buddhist, following the teachings of Japan’s right-wing political Soka Gakkai group, “JD”, as he calls himself, appointed himself in charge of the account. Then, in circumstances not fully explained, but attributed to a bank take-over, JD lost his bank job. So he flew to Tonga and announced that he was leaving the bank and told the king, so he says, that the money could stay in the bank or go to another institution. “And I said, ‘Or you’ll have a third option: possibly you could come with me.” The king, he says, replied: “Fine. We’ll go with you.”
A measure of the depth of thought that went into all this comes with JD’s revelation about his “inspiration” at that meeting. “I thought, ‘You know, I’m born on April Fool’s Day. And I’ve never been able to capitalize on that. I ought to become the King’s jester. I’m a natural-born fool. I want to do some public speaking, and this will be a marketing hook: the Jester, the only Royal Jester.
“So I wrote up the decree, and I went to see him before I left. I said, ‘I’d like to become your jester.’ He said, ‘What the hell do I need a jester for?’ I said, ‘Well, you don’t have one. What’s a court without a jester?’ And you’d be the only king that I know of that has one. And everybody likes to be special. I’ll be a goodwill ambassador-at-large for you.’ And he liked that.”
He used the decree to deal with a legal difficulty in California over getting the money out of the bank he used to work in — he could say he was an employee of the king. JD was making money, allegedly, selling magnets for back pain and moved the money into a Nevada firm called Millennium Asset Management Services, whose president, secretary, treasurer, agent and trust officer, was one H. V. Hiatt. Bogdonoff told Tonga’s government in September that the money could not be repaid on time because Millennium’s investments had not matured as expected.
“The TTF is not bankrupt and insolvent as some critics have been claiming without evidence,’’ Bogdonoff said in a written report. In fact it was, and while the King and the Crown Prince were out of the country, Regent Princess Pilolevu Tuita moved, firing Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Minister Tevita Tupou and Education Minister Tutoatasi Fakafanua who had been Finance Minister. Both were fund trustees.
Pilolevu, who had been having a battle with Tevita Tupou, who had wanted state accountability of the princess’ satellite business, then appointed her supporter, Police Minister Clive Edwards. At about this point the saga became public, in part due to commoner MP Teisina Fuko. “It looks like the money has all gone, it looks like we are the laughing stock of the world again,” he says, ruefully noting that out of the entire passport scandal all Tonga got, in the end, were the Chinese. And these days the king has to appeal to Tongans not to throw stones or attack them as they linger in Nuku’alofa.
—Michael J. Field
Pacific Elbows Way Onto African AgendaAsk a Pacific Islander what is the most important environmental problem facing the region and the answer is likely to be climate change and the fear of rising sea levels. Ask them what they think about the problem of desertification and the response is most likely to draw a blank.
Not so for some 150 countries, including several Pacific Island nations, which met in Geneva from October 1-12 to discuss this very issue at the 5th Session of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. “Desertification is not just about deserts in Africa,” said Joe Horokou, a senior environment officer with the Solomon Islands Ministry of Environment, who was attending his first international UN meeting. “This phenomenon also affects the Pacific.”
The groundbreaking 1992 Rio Earth Summit defined desertification as “land degradation resulting from various factors, including drought, climatic variations and human activities.”
“Desertification affects the poorest of the poor by destroying the natural resources upon which their livelihoods depends on,” the convention’s executive secretary Hama Arba Diallo said in a statement at the opening of the conference. The Convention recognizes the growing population pressures of many countries, and the increasing demand on natural resources. It also recognizes poverty as a key cause and consequence of land degradation.
“This is something we all need to be very concerned about,” Horokou said.
In a speech to conference delegates, Samoan assistant director for the Department of Environment David Sooialo Fong stressed several issues of desertification common to his country, and by extension, many other Pacific islands. This includes natural disasters, flooding, soil erosion, deforestation, uncontrolled use of pesticides in agriculture, sand mining, and of course, climate change.
A recent assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts sea level rises of up to 90 centimeters by the end of the century. These changes could have devastating effects in places like Tuvalu, whose 10,000 inhabitants live on nine low-lying atolls.
According to the Australia Institute, an independent public policy research center based in Canberra, coastal erosion, salt-water intrusion affecting crops and an unusually high level of tropical cyclones are already affecting Tuvaluans. They are not alone. “These problems are the leading focus of concern for Samoa, and many other Pacific Island governments,” Fong said. “That is why we need integrated plans at the national, sub-regional, and regional levels.”
Although the UN Desertification Convention focuses on Africa and other dry land areas, the Asia-Pacific region is of growing importance. This is reinforced by the number of islands that have signed the international environmental agreement, including the Federated States of Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, the Marshall Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Cook Islands, Vanuatu, Palau, Nauru and Niue.
“We are here at this conference in Geneva with the hope of getting a commitment from donor countries to help us deal with the increase in natural disasters and other climate change-related problems,” said Peniasi Kunatuba, Fiji’s permanent secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forests, who was at the Desertification meeting.
— Mark Schulman
Big New Resort Planned for AitutakiThe Captain Cook Resort, a new luxury development in Aitutaki, the Cook Islands’ second most popular visitor destination, is expected to start in February 2002, at a cost of $NZ21 million. But a number of environmental issues are yet to be settled.
Tim Tepaki, director of the Tepaki Group, a New Zealand based company, said that he had received consent “in principle” from the government of the Cooks to proceed with the resort. He estimated that 140 new jobs would be created on the island.
The seven-acre development is to consist of up to 60 accommodation units built on land and 30 more constructed on concrete piers in the lagoon. These will be connected by hardwood boardwalks. The chosen site is adjacent to the Ootu peninsula on the northeast side of Aitutaki.
Aitutaki is one of the most unusual islands in the Pacific, being part atoll and part high-island, with a large and exceptionally beautiful lagoon. Apart from the Aitutaki Resort Hotel and the government-built Rapae, both of which have fallen on hard times in recent years, visitor accommodation on the island tends to be rather small and low key.
Tepaki said that he will go to great lengths to deal with environmental concerns. He said that there had initially been strong opposition from the Aitutaki Island Council to the proposed development, but when he explained matters in more detail “there was a huge swing back.” However, he claimed some opponents were voicing environmental concerns as a smokescreen for their fears of competition from the resort.
Like most resort developers, Tepaki claimed the development would benefit Aitutaki in many ways. “We’re not here to compete but to fill in a missing dimension in tourism in the Cook Islands,” he said. “I’m here to enhance the island and my prime aim is to create jobs for my people.”
Tepaki is also interested in reviving and completing the stalled Vaima’anga (once the Sheraton) project on Rarotonga, if the Auckland-based Covington Group, which also professes an interest, does not proceed with its plans. This will cost another $NZ34 million. “I see the Cook Islands as a two island destination — Rarotonga and Aitutaki,” he said. The link between the two main islands and two major hotels would be vital to the success of both. “We’re in a global economy now and we’ve got to go with the flow or die,” he said. “We can’t just sit here and pretend that the world is going to stay the same.”
— Norman Douglas
Film Puts Saipan on Hot SeatSaipan’s garment factories are once again on the hot-seat, following the broadcast of a cable television film in early November, ‘‘Worth the Risk: Behind the Labels.’’ In a detailed report on the film, Gannett News Service said the film depicts labor and human rights abuses in the factories, which made headlines — and major TV network news programs — in the mid-1990s.
The film highlights a key point of controversy: While Saipan is exempt from U.S. minimum wage and immigration laws, much of the clothing manufactured there bears the label, ‘‘Made in the USA,’’ suggesting that garments are made under regular American labor standards.
But Gannett reported that officials from the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands have said changes in their minimum wage and immigration practices would destroy the territory’s economy, which depends heavily on low-wage foreign labor for both the tourism and garment industries. ‘‘What’s uniquely disturbing about this situation is that the ‘Made in the USA’ label gives people comfort, but it’s almost like you’re being fooled,’’ said Cheryl Mills, senior vice president of Oxygen Media, the cable and Internet network that produced the film.
“This is a country that holds itself out as having values about human dignity, fairness and decent workplace conditions. But these clothes are not made in places that are up to our traditional standards,’’ said Mills, a former White House counsel who helped defend President Clinton against impeachment charges in 1999.
The company that made the film includes talk show heavyweight Oprah Winfrey. Academy Award-winning actress and human-rights advocate Susan Sarandon narrated the film, which Mills said is the first in a series on challenges facing women internationally.
According to the Gannett report, ‘‘Behind the Labels,’’ consists of color footage from inside the factories, interviews with Labor Department and garment industry spokesmen and black and white footage shot by workers with hidden cameras. Female workers, some speaking directly to the camera and some appearing in silhouette to hide their identities, said they felt like they were in prison at the factories, where they were intimidated by supervisors who restricted their bathroom breaks, locked them inside and threatened them if they did not make production quotas, Gannett reported.
Richard Pierce of the Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association asked why major labels such as The Gap and Liz Claiborne would contract for manufacturing in Saipan ‘‘if they were not confident that (minimum wage) laws are being followed?’’
‘‘People on island may say things have gotten better, but there are a huge number of abuses still happening every day,’’ said filmmaker Tina Lessin.
—Giff Johnson
Of Islands, Men and PigsIn many Pacific Islands, the domesticated pig serves a vital role as a form of cultural currency. Yet, despite this importance, researchers say the domesticated pig in American Samoa is at the center of an environmental controversy. An estimated 35,000 pigs in Tutuila alone — each generating two and a half times the waste of humans — are often housed in makeshift, unsanitary backyard piggeries. The waste is usually washed into fresh water streams or over the Tafuna and Leone aquifer; fecal coliform and E-coli bacteria have been detected, forcing the American Samoa Environmental Protection Agency to issue boil water notices.
Combating this potentially serious environmental situation is the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service area office in Guam and the American Samoa field office. “Education is the key to creating awareness about the effects of pig waste on the environment and a person’s quality of life,” said Bob Bartholomew, state resource conservationist with NRCS in Guam.
NRCS recently published a wide range of educational literature — fact sheets, posters, and a booklet depicting alternative piggery models in Pohnpei — about pigs and the effects of pig waste on the environment. Additionally, a 20-minute film documentary was produced and will be shown on television in American Samoa. “American Samoa, like other Pacific Islands, is plagued with problems of modernism,” Bartholomew said. “Overpopulation, a wastewater infrastructure running at full capacity, and a chronic lack of funding and trained manpower are factors that could, if left unchecked, spell disaster.
“We’re optimistic that with an educational approach, Pacific islanders will recognize that their environment is finite, and once cleaned, will lead to a better quality of life.”
— Bruce L. Campbell
