Campaign Against Organised Crime

Shaun Evans..."we're looking at more regional and international working groups.".

This ignorance is beginning to turn into light as a Pacific Islands network of interacting law enforcement agencies evolves.
Half a dozen countries have financial intelligence units up and running, or nearly so. The region's police, customs and immigration department chiefs have their clubs operating and working together.

In Fiji, the police, tax and customs departments have just launched a trans-national crime unit focussed on drug trafficking, money laundering, people smuggling.

Evans was moved from the New Zealand Customs Department, where he was engaged in fighting the narcotics trade and in law enforcement training, to join the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat at Suva as its security liaison officer with the initial brief of improving cooperation and information exchanges between the region's police, customs and immigration agencies.

His brief is widening as islands government states feel international pressure for them to fall into line with what the targets for international terrorism insist must be done to fight it.

For decades the Pacific Islands have been fertile ground for a procession of carpetbaggers, some colourful, some merely slimebaggers.
Most islands governments have been hit like suckers with giant ruby, government bond, loan, passport, airline, investment and land swindles.

At some point in the last 20 or so years, crooks of a more sinister nature began intruding into the region. It became evident that the Pacific Islands were being used as transit points for the movement of hard drugs into Australia and New Zealand, and perhaps northwards, to America.

Occasional seizures of cocaine and heroin hidden in surfboards and other receptacles began to be made.

Caches of hard drugs and marijuana were found hidden in tanks or just packaged and buried on lonely beaches in the Solomon Islands and Polynesia.

The steady movement of narcotics through Tonga was detected with the stuff hidden in yams shipped to New Zealand.

A 357-kilo shipment of heroin found in Suva was at the time three years ago the fifth largest ever found outside heroin producing countries. Some minor Chinese handlers were convicted after a trial in Suva at which evidence was produced to show that the stuff had been sent from Hong Kong for on-shipment to Australia. A 50-kilo packet of cocaine found floating in a Kiribati lagoon was thought to be washing powder and used for laundry purposes at US$50,000 a kilo.

For some years, the United States, Australia and European countries have been attacking and have succeeded in wholly or partly closing down offshore finance centres in Nauru, Vanuatu, Samoa, Niue, the Cook Islands, Tonga and the Marshall Islands, they allege are being used by crime syndicates, and hence probably terrorism cells for moving money internationally for illicit purposes.

A year ago, Fiji suddenly tossed out a Muslim cleric from Sudan alleged to have connections with the Saudi terrorist leader, Osama bin Laden. In the Cook Islands, the real identity of a West African arrested two years ago after travelling through Samoa, Fiji and Tonga is still unknown to authorities.

According to a well-informed former Solomon Islands cabinet minister, Alfred Sasako, a successful journalist, the real purpose of Australia's intervention in his country is suspicion from the United States aroused by a Syrian company's request to operate a cargo plane operated through Honiara.

According to Evans, the Pacific Islands don't appear to be a playground for better-known crime organisations like the Chinese triads, mafia, or Japan's yakuza. Actually, one yakuza was until recently benignly present in Fiji.

But, he says, "We have organised groups which work to the same principles. They may not have direct links with triads but have organised themselves to commit crime. There is a lot of speculation about what is happening.

"A lot of them have a lot of patience. They will set up in a country and become part of the community and show a lot of patience before they actually move to start becoming involved in criminal activity.

Fiji Police Commissioner Andrew Hughes, who joined the force from the Australian Federal Police in mid-2003, says that certainly in Fiji he questions whether enough is being done to check the bonafides and background of foreigners arriving as investors.

"It may come down to a lack of means to do that. This is where development of trans-national crime units can play an important role once they develop and mature.

"We have not actually been looking for it, but there have been causes of false identity documents throughout the region and these things are not going to stop.

"What we note in Fiji is that there are Asian girls brought in to be employed in the sex industry. They come in with student visas for example. It is a matter we need to focus our attention on because of the potential for organised crime to be involved in it.
"It is difficult, even in Australia, to check the bonafides of people coming from mainland China."

Evans says the operating network of regional crime fighting agencies is becoming an effective one, although there's still much more to be done in developing it.

South Pacific police chiefs meet annually; there is an Oceania customs organisation, and now a Pacific immigration directors' secretariat.
"We are looking at more regional and international working groups.

"We have steady working relations with Hawaii's authorities, the US Customs and Homeland Security and Australian and New Zealand authorities

"We do a lot of specialist training like intelligence analysis.

"We work extremely well with the Pacific Financial Intelligence Unit and the Asia-Pacific Group on Money Laundering based in Sydney."

A hurdle, he says, is persuading islands governments to speedily enact laws dealing with such matters as extradition.
"It can be very difficult to get amendments to legislations in small countries more concerned with fish and rice issues."
A new spectre arising in the region is the possibility of the distribution and actual manufacture of amphetamine drugs, he says. Amphetamine sold in Australia and New Zealand for $30-40 each could be made in the islands for less than 50 cents. Suspicions were aroused in Fiji in May when attempts to import the chemical ingredients of amphetamine was reported. Amphetamines had won a dreadful grip on the youth of Hawaii.

Sold at a fraction of the cost they go for in New Zealand and Australia, they could gain a similar grip on the Pacific Islands' youth market, Evans says.

Finishing his talk at the Economics Association of Fiji, the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat's Secretary-General, Greg Urwin, remarked that the Pacific's mood of relaxation "has very deep roots. That combined with the not yet full sweep of protective measures means that people with evil intent can go shopping in the region. If one jurisdiction doesn't suit them, then there's another down the road."