Fiji coup leader has clouded past

By FRANCESCA MOLD

The man in control of Fiji is an articulate businessman who has in the past year been under investigation by his previous employer and the Government.

George Speight, the son of former MP Sam Speight, is believed to have been chosen as the frontman for yesterday's coup by disgruntled indigenous Fijian politicians sidelined by ethnic Indian Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry.

Mr Speight was believed to be bitter after Agriculture Minister Poseci Bune sacked him as chairman of Fiji Pine last June along with his entire board.

He was also sacked in April last year from the British insurance company Heath Group, which had employed him at its Suva office for three years but had doubts about him.

"He was away and we elected to get a firm of auditors in to go through the reports and found enough there to warrant his dismissal," an unnamed former colleague told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio.

"He didn't want to go. There was a standoff situation between him and his lawyer and the company and its lawyers and the situation got a bit heated."

Mr Speight's resentment of Mr Chaudhry's year-old Administration grew recently after Fiji Hardwood Corporation, of which he was chairman, lost a lucrative mahogany harvesting contract tendered by the Government.

"George Speight ... recently came off slightly second-best as a result of the change of Government," former Fijian democracy activist Richard Naidu told Radio New Zealand.

Mr Naidu was spokesman for the Government of Dr Timoci Bavadra, which was toppled in the first Fiji coup in May 1987. The lawyer and former New Zealand Herald subeditor was bashed up by nationalist activists.

Mr Speight, a business graduate with degrees in marketing, management and finance from Andrews University in the US state of Michigan, worked in Australia for eight years as a financial, insurance and banking broker before joining Heath Group.

A special meeting of Health Group was to be held at the end of this month to discuss the results of an investigation into his directorship.

Mr Speight was also a former board member of a number of Government-owned companies, including Telecom Fiji.

Fijians living in New Zealand yesterday described him as the ideal frontman for a coup.

"He would be prepared to do the dirty work while others hid behind him," said one source.

Some Fijians in New Zealand said Mr Speight, who has relatives in Auckland, was viewed as part-European rather than an indigenous Fijian, an important distinction in Fiji.

His father is a close friend of Major-General Sitiveni Rabuka, who led the May 1987 coup.