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Fiji’s police chief has ordered the immediate transfer of all illicit drugs and cash to highly secure police vaults after officials confirmed Wednesday that 52.4 kilograms of cocaine tied to two major criminal cases were stolen from a High Court evidence room, in the capital, Suva, with much of the contraband replaced by flour.
The incident is seen as a significant blow to a police force already struggling with corruption allegations amid a surge in international drug trafficking. However, Police Commissioner Rusiate Tudravu maintained that police are not responsible for guarding evidence once it is transferred to the judiciary, comparing the nation’s High Court to a private residence.
“It’s just like your home,” he told an OCCRP reporter. “You’re the boss of your home. I cannot come and tell you I’ll guard your home. Simple.”
Fiji, a nation of fewer than a million people, is facing an escalating drug crisis. It has become a transit hub for cocaine smuggled from South America to Australia and New Zealand, and is now seeing a spike in domestic use driving soaring HIV rates linked to intravenous methamphetamine use.
Authorities first realized evidence was missing in mid-September during a routine inspection ahead of a court-ordered drug destruction operation. After discovering that seven one-kilogram parcels of cocaine had vanished, investigators tested the remaining 32 parcels from the case.
“When the seven bars went missing… we were suspicious about the remaining parcels,” Acting Director of Criminal Investigations Peni Tuivaga said. He added that the testing confirmed those had been emptied and refilled with another substance, which Tudravu told OCCRP was flour.
The tampered evidence was tied to the case of Joshua Rahman, a Canadian-Fijian national convicted in 2021 for the unlawful possession of 39.5 kilograms of cocaine in 2019. Tudravu noted that the missing evidence would not affect Rahman’s conviction, which the Supreme Court recently reinstated after a lower appellate court had quashed it.
Adding to the scandal Tuivaga revealed an active, previously unreported investigation into the theft of another 12 kilograms of cocaine from the same evidence room in March.
That earlier batch of stolen cocaine belonged to the case of former Australian horse trainer John Nikolic, who is serving an 18-year sentence for a 2019 drug smuggling conviction after appealing his original 23-year jail term. Police did not say whether that case might be affected.
Tudravu said police are looking into six persons of interest who had access to the High Court evidence room, including one currently out of the country. Preliminary investigations revealed the building’s CCTV and biometric security systems were not operational, though Tudravu declined to comment on whether they had been deliberately sabotaged.
Correction: An earlier version of this story inaccurately reported that Fijian police said John Nikolic's case would be unaffected by the theft of cocaine from an evidence room. In fact, police did not say whether it would or not.
