[Source: Fiji Government/ Facebook]

The Fiji Financial Intelligence Unit saw a major breakthrough in its efforts to combat financial crimes and detect suspicious transactions.

Last year, the FIU received a staggering 3.7 million transaction reports from reporting entities.

Manager Intelligence Management, Esther Sue says they have been working with both the private and public sectors, resulting in over $25 million worth of financial transactions now stored in their extensive database.

Manager of Intelligence Management, Esther Sue.

Presenting at the 2023 Pacific Anti-Corruption Regional Conference, Sue says these transaction reports include valuable data such as suspicious, threshold, and cash transactions as well as remittance, and border currency reports.

According to Sue they have been cooperating with other relevant authorities, to broaden the scope of their efforts to safeguard Fiji’s financial integrity.

“So in 2022, there were 55 from the Fiji police force, five from FRCS, three from the immigration department, and other agencies, there were five. Now, when we receive requests for investigative assistance, its active investigations that are taking place, might be investigations that you’ve seen in the media. We don’t get mentioned. We don’t want to get mentioned. But what we do is we provide financial intelligence.”

Sue stresses the information they provide is for intelligence purposes only, and cannot be used as evidence.

However, she adds that identifying where the bank accounts are in order for law enforcement to execute the search warrants and get what they need to provide it in court as evidence.