One hundred and seventy five million dollars’ worth of ‘tainted proceeds’ were exposed by the Financial Intelligence Unit in 2018.

Unit Director Razim Buksh says these were identified from more than 600 suspicious transaction reports where ¤321 cases of tax evasion, money laundering and border currency smuggling were detected by the Financial Intelligence Unit.

The FIU has the capacity to investigate, analyse, profile and give meaning to those transactions. So 321 reports were disseminated to law enforcement agencies.

The bulk of these reports have gone to the Fiji Revenue and Customs Service to prosecute criminals or fine tax evaders.

The FIU now even has real-time data sharing with the Fiji Police Force and the revenue collection agency. This becomes especially handy during urgent/complex investigations.

Buksh confirms the FIU in 2018 assisted with six successful money laundering convictions, 50 border currency smuggling cases and several cases of tax evasion.

Criminals are also advantaged in terms of technology at their disposal, they are more organized and well resourced. This is a huge challenge

The Unit also did background investigations of 1,172 entities and 1,500 individuals on the request of law enforcement agencies.