The newly described “citizen journalist/publisher”, Charlie Charters, expected a pleasant flight out of Fiji last night on FJ915 and to be tucked up in bed in Sydney after a few inflight drinks.
Instead he was detained at Nadi Airport, driven to Suva and spent the night at FICAC – the corruption watchdog whose legal powers extend not just to common-or-garden-variety corruption but alleged wrongdoing of any kind.
FICAC can detain a person it arrests for 48 hours without having to lay any charge against them. So Charlie faces another night in detention at FICAC Commissioner Lavi Rokoika‘s house of pain – the Rev John Hunt House – before she is obliged to charge him and put him before a court of law.
We don’t yet know the precise details of Charlie’s offence. But would Lavi Rokoika be stupid enough to create a cause célèbre over his disclosures about the alleged conduct of her brother-in-law, Gilbert Vakalalabure, at the Sports Council? Or for asking why Lavi’s husband, Tevita Vakalalabure, has been seen in her office at FICAC and may have had access to confidential information?
Lavi Rokoika is already on the ropes as the Judicial Services Commission ponders whether to remove her after Justice Dane Tuiqereqere‘s ruling that her appointment by the Prime Minister was unlawful. Would she really want to stir the hornets nest that constitutes Charlie Charters’ social clique in Suva, which includes Richard Naidu and Wylie Clarke?
Naidu has immediately come to Charlie’s defence by using his influence with the Fiji Times to get a front page story in today’s Sunday Times questioning the legal basis of Charlie’s detention. And in a case of déjà vu all over again, Wylie Clarke – the President of the Fiji Law Society – retraced his steps to FICAC last night to come to Charlie’s assistance.
It wasn’t the posse that Wylie Clarke assembled last September 5 to descend on FICAC to free Barbara Malimali from arrest and intimidate the then acting acting FICAC deputy commissioner, Francis Puleiwai. Clarke arrived alone and was evidently given short shrift, judging by the brevity of his visit. Because for a start, he doesn’t appear to be Charlie’s lawyer. Seforan Fatiaki says he is.
We’re all waiting to find out the precise reason why the dual British-Fijian national is in hot water to the extent of being banned from leaving the country. Is it – as the mainstream media is speculating – because he refused to tell the FICAC arresting officers the name of the “whistleblower” who gave him information on the Sports Council and Lavi Rokoika’s ties to her husband and brother-in-law?
That story has sent the mainstream media into a frenzy as an assault on freedom of information and the protection of whistleblowers. If that is indeed the case, Grubsheet will join them and the likes of Victor Lal in standing shoulder-to -shoulder with Charlie Charters.
The public’s right to know is under constant assault in Fiji. And it is the height of hypocrisy for the Coalition government to be trumpeting a new era of media freedom when it is just as unaccountable as its predecessor, if not worse. As Grubsheet observed in our last piece, Frank Bainimarama and Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum at least went after their opponents. In this instance, the “New Order” is going after one of its most vocal supporters. Go figure.
Yet another possibility has emerged that has nothing to do with whistle-blowers or the Sports Council. And that is the attack Charlie Charters made last September on Justice David Ashton-Lewis, the Supreme Court judge who conducted the landmark Commission of Inquiry into the Malimali affair.
In a Facebook posting, Charlie described Justice Ashton-Lewis as a “conman and fantasist”. The problem for Charlie is that he committed a criminal offence under the Commissions of Inquiry Act, which Grubsheet reported at the time in an article dated September 3, 2025, and which Charlie denied.
Here are the relevant exchanges. First the relevant extract from Charlie’s original Facebook posting:
Then what the law says:
And the subsequent exchanges between Grubsheet and Charlie Charters, when I wrote that he had left himself wide open to a two year jail sentence.
That’s where we left it. Yet five months later, the goose is still cooking. And Charlie is now the subject of a formal complaint to FICAC by a fellow whistleblower, the Sydney-based Alexandra Forwood, who has become the bane of existence of a great many people in Fiji and now Old Peculier himself.
As with all such complaints, FICAC has no choice but to investigate it. All of which means that Charlie Charters has been less than prudent in deciding to pay a visit to Fiji in the first place.
The ostensible reason for his trip was evidently to pick up a new Fiji passport. But this could have been obtained from a Fiji embassy or high commission anywhere. Which raises the following question:
Has Charlie – like the legendary Icarus* – flown too close to the sun? Did he think that his support for the “New Order” made him a protected species in Fiji? That he could willfully disregard the Commissions of Inquiry Act and remain unmolested because Justice Ashton Lewis also happens to be on the nose with members of his glee club such as Richard Naidu and Wylie Clarke?
We shall see.
But there is no question about FICAC’s ability to lay charges in relation to his description of Justice Ashton-Lewis as a “conman”. In fact, it can lay charges against anybody in Fiji for anything whatsoever that constitutes an offence under any written law.
Yes anything. Including calling a judge a conman. Which is why Grubsheet will not be making the same mistake as Charlie Charters in returning to Fiji, especially when unlike him, I am a critic of the Coalition and among my many “sins”, have described the Chief Justice, Salesi Temo, as corrupt.
It’s a description that I would contend is demonstrably true, whereas Charlie’s description of Justice Ashton-Lewis isn’t true at all. Though I certainly don’t intend to saunter nonchalantly past the strumming minstrels in the Nadi Airport arrivals concourse – as Charlie did – to put it to the test.
————————-
A selection of the latest media reports:
Images from last night’s drama:
Background articles on Charlie’s revelations about the Sports Council and Lavi Rokoika:
So what exactly is a “citizens journalist “? I heard this for the first time. Does this term also applies to the likes of Kishore Kumar sa malo, Feroz Ghulam Mohammed bhula binaka fiji and others who are officially not journalists but put a lot of effort into talking about things which the mainstream media usually hides.
I only heard of “citizens arrest” such as the thief that in Nabua who was apprehend by 20 or so big men and likelyto be escorted to Nabua Police Station.
Poor Charlie. Always assumed that his marriage into an iTaukei world and his association with the late Hot Bread queen would give him permanent immunity from anything and everything.
I recall people were extremely critical of the FFP government when it was alleged to be using FICAC as its personal Gestapo.
It’s definitely a dog eat dog world in Fiji.
What this Charters fellow does not realise is that this is Fiji. He has absolutely no idea how things work in Fiji even after having been married to a Fijian and having lived in Fiji for god knows how many decades.
He has no idea and never will. He is a vulagi who will never be able to understand the local culture and traditions. He can pretend all he wants.
I would like to know what he thinks about the incompetents who are in this government now.