Post Fiji Limited is awaiting response from the Ministry of Public Enterprise to write off over $9.6m debt owed to the company by Logistics Consultant International Pty Ltd.

Post Fiji Chief Executive Isaac Mow says they engaged overseas and local based legal firms, and an Australia based investigation company Truth Investigations to recover the debt, but the investigations revealed that it was not possible.

Mow says Logistics Consultant had been voluntarily wound up and deregistered as a company.

The Australia-based logistics company was engaged by Post Fiji as a consultant to provide an independent review and assessment of Post Fiji’s existing system and processes to be in line with the Universal Postal Union and ISO standards.

“After exhausting all avenues for the recovery of the outstanding amount of $9.6 million, management had submitted a decision paper to the company board in a board meeting dated 19th May 2023, recommending that the board make a decision to write off the Freepost debt, totalling $9,789,291 after consultation with the line ministry, which is the Ministry of Public Enterprise.”

The Fiji Independent Commission against Corruption was also involved in the matter but they were unable to lay charges against the consultant.

PAC Deputy Chair Sakiusa Tubuna says Post Fiji should take steps to avoid such scenarios in the future.

“$9.6 million is quite a significant amount. This is not just shows the poor and the bad management of the previous board, and of course the previous management. And we can’t be repeating these sort of mistakes.”

Isaac Mow explains they found out later that the deal with the Australian based consultant was made verbally.

“Unfortunately, there was no such agreement in place. It was sort of a gentleman’s agreement between one of our former senior management and Mr. Shaf Khan. We only got to find out about the business when the accounts department started following up with other respective departments on payments from this company. So that’s when we found out that there was, I mean, this business was going on, but without any agreement in place.”

Mow assured the PAC members that as of now all their agreements are up to date with their business customers.

Post Fiji Boar Chair, Isireli Leweniqila also says that they cannot afford to repeat the mistakes from the past.

“Simply put it was a bad mistake. It was a really pathetic decision by the previous managers on this and we are it all the present managers and the present board. So what I did as a chairman when I came in a year ago I asked them to just since we provided for it write it off so we can’t point fingers at anybody else it was really a bad mistake and from now on with a new board and with these young managers the vigilance is the word, eh?”

Leweniqila says he has warned Post Fiji Limited staff to be wary of fly-by-night investors who were getting away in the past despite striking false deals.

Post Fiji says there is a delay in writing off the loan as the Minister for Public Enterprise is awaiting clarification on whether he is the right person to act on the matter or if it falls under the jurisdiction of the Minister for Finance.