Senior Fijian police officers under investigation for links to drug traffickers
The director of Fiji’s Serious Organized Crime and Intelligence Department, Fisi Nasario, is one of seven senior Fijian Police officers under investigation as allegations of police corruption and collusion with organized crime figures roil the nation’s police force.
Fiji’s Commissioner of Police, Rusiate Tudravu, confirmed the investigation to OCCRP during a press conference in Suva on Monday.
Screenshots of what appeared to be dozens of Viber chats were posted on social media last week, purporting to show members of the Fiji Police Force chatting with drug traffickers. The discussions included the movement of an undisclosed amount of hard drugs, concealment of weapons and military-grade explosives, illicit payment to police officers, and repeated calls to eliminate an individual they feared would reveal their identities and activities to other officers.
Fijian media reported last weekend that the phones of seven police officers had been seized for digital forensic analysis.
“We’ll be taking all steps to get all the evidence and get to the root cause of who is sending this message, and we want to get him and find out the real connections that are out there,” Tudravu said.
“So at this point in time, we are working with [Australian] Federal Police (AFP) along that line.”
Tudravu confirmed that the person who uploaded the conversations on social media has filed an official complaint, supported by a statement and evidence, with their AFP counterparts.
He also said assistance was being provided by the AFP and the New Zealand Police as “the person initiating the conversations via Viber is allegedly residing overseas.”
Allegations of police corruption, abuse of office and active collusion in the drug trade have surfaced repeatedly in recent years.
In a parliamentary address last month, Fiji’s Minister for Policing, Ioane Naivalurua, said 33 drug-related cases were recorded between January 2023 and October 2025 involving 27 police officers.
In 2025 alone, four officers—two of them from the now disbanded Counter-Narcotics Bureau of the Ministry of Policing—were charged with multiple counts including unlawful possession, supply, and importation of illicit drugs.
Large seizures—including multi-tonne hauls worth hundreds of millions of dollars—and a surge in drug-related cases before the courts, have highlighted the country’s ongoing struggle with the problem.
In late September, police raided several properties across Fiji’s Central, Southern and Western divisions, arresting 10 people and seizing methamphetamine, cash, and foreign currency.
Previous OCCRP reporting has shown that Fiji’s drug problem is deeply rooted in years of official neglect and corruption, with politically connected businessmen and foreign crime groups using the country as a hub in a booming trans-Pacific meth and cocaine trade bound for Australia and New Zealand.
Irina Balakireva