Police are following the money trail after more than $50 million worth of cocaine went missing from the Suva High Court Exhibit Room, and we can confirm that investigators have established more than $300,000 in alleged suspicious transfers to a former Judicial Department employee’s mobile money transfer account.
Our sources confirm it is $300,000 and counting, and they are investigating the alleged suspicious transfers to the woman’s MPAiSA account.
She is currently overseas, and the investigators are trying to get her for questioning.
The woman is a close relative of an Acting Head of an independent institution in the country.
We have asked Police if they have reached out to the Acting Head to assist in locating the former Judicial Department employee. They have not made any comments on that.
When asked earlier, Police Commissioner, Rusiate Tudravu said no assumptions should be made, and everyone should allow the investigations to take its course.
The woman’s 51-year-old husband who is allegedly linked to the tampering of the drug exhibits at the Suva High Court, has been charged with one count of Interfering with Evidence and one count of Unlawful Possession of Illicit Drugs.
He has appeared in the Suva Magistrates Court.
Investigations continue with regards to the alleged involvement of others.
This case came to light after fijivillage News questioned Police on whether cocaine from the Joshua Aziz Rahman case was missing.
We had enquired about it and on 15th September, a physical check was done, after which it was confirmed by Police that 7 bars of cocaine were missing from the Rahman cocaine exhibit.
fijivillage News then received confirmation a few days later that the remaining 32 bars were tested for flour.
Those drugs were tested twice before the case, and it was confirmed to be cocaine which means they were replaced with flour.
Following this, it was also confirmed by the Police that 12 kilograms of cocaine was missing from March this year from the John Nikolic drug case.
However this information was not made public until the recent case.
Police said to us that not everything needs to be made public as it can jeopardise the investigations.
All these drug exhibits were kept at the Suva High Court Exhibit Room, and the missing cocaine is valued at more than $50 million.
Chief Justice Salesi Temo and Chief Registrar Tomasi Bainivalu are yet to respond to our questions on whether a full audit will be done at all court exhibit rooms in the country, and whether all the drug exhibits will be tested.
Stay with us for developments.
