Amid seething resentment at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs over Lynda Tabuya‘s prominent role on the Prime Minister’s overseas visits, reports are reaching Grubsheet that while she is still going to Israel this week at the PM’s side, her plan to go on to New York for the UN General Assembly has been cancelled.
Why? Because she is evidently terrified of Donald Trump‘s border crackdown and the possibility of her being denied entry or detained, with all the accompanying humiliation back home for her, Sitiveni Rabuka and the Coalition.
The skeletons in Lynda Tabuya’s closet are starting to rattle, including her financial history in the United States and her close links with the Chinese – both of which are ample cause for her to be worried about setting foot on American soil.
Lynda Tabuya is a multi-millionaire whose husband, Rob Semaan, is co-owner of Fiji’s largest construction company, Pacific Building Solutions. She was able to escape being charged by FICAC with making a false income declaration by claiming that the couple have been formally divorced since 2016. But they are still very much married and the Ashton-Lewis Commission of Inquiry has recommended that Tabuya be re-investigated for what it described as a “sham divorce”.
Donald Trump’s people don’t care about any of that. But the Semaans are notorious in the United States for having racked up more than $F100-million in unpaid debts when they were living there in the early noughties. It happened with the collapse of their Go Fig fat-reduction company, which sold “lipodissolve” injections that Lynda and Rob claimed in their advertising would dissolve fat.
You’d imagine that millions were there to be made when Americans are some of the most obese people on the planet. IF the injections worked. Yet in the event, the Semaans were forced to file for bankruptcy and scores of ordinary Americans who invested in Lynda Tabuya’s US company shed dollars instead of fat, including some who lost their life savings.
A settlement of sorts was reached with some of the biggest creditors (see below) who were alleging “fraudulent transfer” and “breach of fiduciary duty”. But there are lot of American moms and dads who are still very unhappy with Lynda and Rob Semaan and especially those who have become aware of their current lavish lifestyle in Fiji, which includes luxury vehicles, their co-ownership of the Leluvia Island Resort and Lynda Tabuya’s famous eye-catching wardrobe.
How might that unhappiness manifest itself if Lynda Tabuya sets foot on American soil as Fiji’s newly minted MInister for Information? For the Madam herself, it doesn’t bear thinking about, let alone the embarrassment to the government and to Fiji of her being targeted on an official visit by disgruntled creditors, their lawyers or the US Government. So the decision has reportedly been made – though not confirmed – that the Minister won’t be going to New York after all.
And there’s another reason. US authorities have become aware of Lynda Tabuya’s close ties to the Chinese and the suggestion – previously reported by Grubsheet – that she may even be an agent of influence for the Chinese government. Receiving money personally from the Chinese Ambassador in Suva, Zhao Xian – including one payment of $F172,000 for projects in her home village on Kadavu – has inevitably put Tabuya on the US intelligence radar. And that is another reason to steer clear of Donald Trump’s America as his relations with Beijing go into free-fall over the tariffs he has imposed on Chinese imports.
We await an official announcement that the Minister for (Dis)Information will no longer be by the Prime Minister’s side in New York or maybe she will just quietly fly home from Jerusalem as the rest of his delegation moves on to the Big Apple. Yet whatever happens, Lynda Tabuya is already proving to be a public relations disaster for the Coalition simply because she has become the story when her job is to promote the Prime Minister and the government, not be in the news herself.
The latest article in the Fiji TImes is astonishing – Sitiveni Rabuka saying that she is needed on the Israel visit “to present the woman’s perspective”. (see below) Oh really, PM? And we thought she was there to perform the increasingly impossible task of making you look good. Silly us.
It constitutes a tacit admission that when it comes to burnishing the government’s dire fortunes, Lynda Tabuya is already a miserable failure. As Blind Freddy has been able to see all along, she should never been appointed in the first place. It’s just that Blind Siti still can’t see it himself.
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First the extraordinary Fiji Times report on the Israel debacle.
Here’s that list for anyone who missed it when Grubsheet published it more than two weeks ago on September 4. Lynda Tabuya as Minister for Information plus the Director of Information, Samisoni Pareti plus a media officer plus a “videographer”. Four people for some happy snaps with “Bibi” Netanyahu, a press release and the usual Facebook posting with Lynda in the spotlight.
Now a flashback to Lynda Tabuya’s travails in the US, courtesy of Missouri Lawyers Media. The “more than 50-million US dollars” equates to more than 111-million Fiji dollars at today’s exchange rate.
The article as it appeared in the US publication.
Fraudulent? Who, moi?
Wow, with all that factual ( Eds: word deleted for legal reasons) history, the favours showered by Rabuka gov must have been earned by her being really GIB.
Pound town for Uncle Rabaku but not for Uncle Sam !
It will be a proud and momentous occasion when the Fijian delegation meets with the Israeli PM in Jerusalem at the opening of the Fiji Embassy. It will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and the Fiji delegation has done everything to be present at the occasion. There is no better feeling than to be in the Promised Land where God was born.
What I would like the Fiji delegation to tell us is how it felt to shake the blood-soaked hands of a mass-murderer and a person with charges of genocide hanging over his head.
I cannot wait to see the pictures of the happy occasion splashed all over the world. Lynda will be in the front of the photo opportunity and the grins on all their faces will top off a once-in-a-lifetime and very proud moment. Fiji will be on the map and it will make God very happy.
Or is there another take on all this?
Yahweh (Jehovah) was not born in Israel.
Stop peddling rubbish.
Wasn’t Jesus born in Bethlehem? And isn’t he God? Or are you now a Muslim. Muslims consider Jesus as one of their highest prophets. and not God? Or don’t you know what the F you are on about?
Or are you making things up as you go, as is the tradition in Fiji nowadays?
Bethlehem is in Westbank ,Palestine you uneducated oaf !!
As posted yesterday. Great news that Lynda is touchable after all. The US is clearly a red zone for her (and Rob!) whereas the red carpet awaits her in Beijing.
Vinaka GS for your promise to keep pursuing and exposing her (and others?) right up to the ballot box.
It is obvious to me that the Christians of Fiji understand the Bible, the Promised Land and the Chosen People better than anyone else in the world. Why else would they go to Israel now to establish an embassy when the rest of the civilised world is keeping as far away from that place as possible?
What I find amazing is that this understanding of Christianity and Israelites and the Promised Land the and Chosen People has come about in a short 150 or so years since the vulagi religion was introduced in Fiji. Fijians are now capable of teaching the rest of the world how to correctly practice the religion.
The turnaround from being cannibals only a short while ago to the leading nation of Christians is an amazing feat. I am sure the PM will confirm that. It is either that or the Christians of Fiji are completely deluded.
I have always wondered how many of his fellow people Ratu Seru Cakobau consumed before he converted and ceded Fiji to Britain.
Has anyone else?
Lynda would be the face of the Fiji woman??
The mind boggles…I wonder what the women of Fiji will make of this.
So Rabuka is being ‘inclusive’ in the choice of delegation members. Of course Indo-Fijian and other minority faces do not matter in his new vision of Fiji as an ethno-nationalistic, exclusively i-Taukei society. This has been the hallmark of Fijian delegation these days.
If Biman and NFP cannot see this, or simply ignore this for their own survival, they are digging deeper graves for themselves.
The high regard Rabuka shows for Lynda, despite her questionable character, is astonishing and speaks volumes about the misjudgments in leadership.
One can only hope that American intelligence at the U.S. Embassy in Suva has already shared—or will promptly share—relevant information regarding Lynda with Washington, particularly if she is to be part of Fiji’s delegation to the United Nations General Assembly.
Similarly, the UNDP office in Suva should communicate any pertinent details to their counterparts in New York.
Rabuka’s justification for taking Lynda to Israel on the grounds of “women’s issues” is equally puzzling. Fiji already has a Minister for Women—why not her, instead of Lynda, who was recently removed from that very position?
It is also time for Shashi Kiran to recognize that she and the NFP MPs are being used. Their automatic “Yes, Prime Minister” stance to every decision, even when it runs counter to the interests of Indo-Fijians, must end.