Ice Bubbles Nipped In The Bud

For months the Pacific Islands have heard warnings from political agencies like the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat and national police commissioners that they are targets now for international organised crime.

When one day in June they pounced for Operation Outrigger on the occupants of a rundown warehouse in the Laucala Beach industrial estate, on the outskirts of Suva, Fiji police and customs officials had the satisfaction of proving themselves to be right.

The building had been converted into what Fiji police commissioner Andrew Hughes said was the biggest illegally known crystal methamphetamine factory in the Southern Hemisphere and one of the biggest anywhere in the world.

"Bubbling away," said Hughes, was a production line capable of producing 500 kilos of the stuff, popularly known as ice, weekly.

"This is a frightening example of transnational organised crime elements using Fiji as a staging ground for their illegal activities," Hughes told reporters. "Increasingly, we are seeing these elements coming to Fiji and joining up with local organised criminal groups." More than 120 drums of chemicals were later extracted from the building by New Zealand experts trained to handle the highly volatile stuff without blowing themselves up and the neighbourhood.

Five kilos of ice were seized. The chemicals were sufficient to make 1000 kilos of ice with an estimated street value in intended Australian, New Zealand, American and European markets of F$1000 million or about US$540 million.

Fiji's total export earnings have just touched the F$1000 million mark.

A transnational crime unit formed by the Fiji police and customs services 14 months previously had been watching the warehouse for months.

Of the seven people arrested, six were Chinese, two being Fiji passport holders. The seventh is understood to be a Fiji businessman who hadn't be charged or identified by the time Island Business went to print. Towards the end of June, local authorities were questioning an immigration department official and a customs officer who were said to have been linked to the arrested Chinese.

In past years there have been consistent reports of illicit sales of Fiji passports to Asian buyers and deals for citizenship that led to the immigration department shake-up and transfer or dismissal of officials from it.

In Malaysia, authorities arrested seven people‹two Chinese nationals, three men and a woman from Hong Kong, and one Malaysian. They said more arrests were expected since Malaysia appeared to be a meeting place for a syndicate.

Arrests were made in Hong Kong, with one man being asked to account for the several million dollars found in his possession, a small amount of that being from Fiji.

At the end of June, the picture shaping was of an international organisation that had decided that Fiji would be a soft, easy, safe place for the manufacture of ice, an addictive stimulant favoured by young socialites but capable of inflicting consumers with serious physical and mental damage and death.

The six arrested in Suva were remanded by a magistrate's court for a high court trial on a charge of making an illegal drug punishable by a maximum of eight years jail. In Malaysia, the penalty would be death.

Co-incidentally, on the day of the raid, the Fiji House of Representatives dealt with the first reading of a bill to drastically stiffen drug deal offences by imposing sentences of life imprisonment (in Fiji normally about 12 years) and a fine of upto F$1 million (US$540,000).

The investigation had Australian and New Zealand police support.

Operation Outrigger was the first big drug bust in Fiji. More than 350 kilos of heroin was seized in 2000 and a Suva Chinese restaurant proprietor and some minor Hong Kong Chinese handlers subsequently jailed.

Deputy Police Commissioner Moses Driver, who co-chairs the transnational crime unit with Tony O'Connor, deputy head of customs, told Islands Business that the chemical apparatus and chemicals found in the warehouse had been shipped from Malaysia and Hong Kong.

The Chinese nationals entered the country on visitor's permits. One who was refused entry because he carried several passports appealed and got a permit from the home affairs ministry.

Again, coincidentally, a few days after the raid, the Pacific Transnational Crime Coordination Centre (PTCCC) was opened officially in Suva. It is manned by police officers from Fiji, Samoa, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.

They're being assisted by a seconded Australian police officer.

Pacific police commissioners had agreed at a meeting 12 months previously to establish it as a key part of a Pacific Islands intelligence and analysis network for averting the exploitation of small Pacific Islands states by crime organisations.

The centre is headed by Inspector Alanrow Banimataku, of the Vanuatu police force, with Jared Taggart, an Australian Federal Police officer, as adviser.

National transnational crime units have been established in recent months in Fiji, Tonga, Vanuatu Papua New Guinea and Samoa as combined police/customs/immigration agencies. Another is being formed in the Solomon Islands.

Tuvalu police officers will be attached to the Suva centre for short-term training.