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Fiji's military-backed government is seeking New Zealand help in extraditing a man wanted for an alleged F$17 million ($14.3 million) agriculture scam.
The Fiji police director of economic crime, Superintendent Ravi Narayan, said police wanted to extradite a man known to be in New Zealand on a work permit and another man in Australia.
Fiji's director of public prosecutions had started the paperwork for extradition of the two men, wanted for allegedly conspiring with two directors of Suncourt Hardware to defraud the government of more than F$3.63 million. The two directors - Dhansukhlal Bhika, a former Suva mayor, and Gulab Das Bhika - denied the charges, said to have been committed between 2000 and 2001, when they appeared in Suva Magistrates Court.
They were released on bail to reappear in court on June 4.
After an audit in 2003, the Fiji government alleged more than F$17 million was misused in the Fijian Ministry of Agriculture's farming assistance scheme introduced by the interim administration led by Laisenia Qarase after the 2000 coup.
Fiji police recovered piles of documents from hardware stores where the Agriculture Ministry always bought farming equipment.
Prosecutors subsequently alleged the state was defrauded with items sold to it at three to four times their normal price when the interim government was in office.
Last November, a former high-ranking agriculture official, Peniasi Kunatuba, was jailed for four years by the High Court on charges of abuse of office related to the agriculture scam.
Another former Fijian Ministry of Agriculture officer, Sakiusa Bole, was earlier jailed over the same scam, after being charged with falsification of accounts.
- NZPA
