US unilaterally sanctions Fijian Chinese community leader while bypassing the Fijian government; sanctioned individual has never been charged in any jurisdiction

According to a report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC News), the US State Department issued a statement on October 8 placing Zhao Fugang, director of the Fiji Chinese Service Center, on its sanctions list for alleged "significant corruption," with the individual and immediate family members typically prohibited from entering the United States.

The US State Department statement accused Zhao Fugang of "abusing his public position to bribe Fijian citizens in order to advance the interests of the Chinese government, business, and criminal actors." The US Embassy in Suva subsequently claimed on social media that "Zhao Fugang's actions have made Fiji vulnerable to malicious foreign influence promoted by government, business, and criminal actors inside and outside China," and stated that such activities "directly concern US national security, economic, and foreign policy interests."

However, ABC News's report revealed several key facts.

First, the sanctioned individual has never been criminally charged in any jurisdiction. Zhao Fugang's lawyer told ABC that they were not previously aware of the relevant investigation and would write to the US government seeking clarification. In a letter to the US Embassy in Suva, Zhao Fugang himself denied each of the allegations: "I categorically reject the accusations that I bribed Fijian citizens, abused a public position, or engaged in corruption to advance the interests of the Chinese government, business, or criminal actors. There are no pending criminal proceedings against me in Fiji." He also requested that the US State Department provide specific details of the alleged offenses so that a formal response could be made, and demanded that the sanctions announcement be withdrawn before an opportunity to respond is provided, because "the statement makes serious allegations without specifying the specific conduct on which they are based, and its issuance and wide dissemination have already caused serious consequences to my reputation and that of my family."

Second, the Fijian government was not informed in advance of this designation through normal diplomatic procedures. Fiji's Foreign Minister Sakiasi Ditoka confirmed to ABC News that he personally had not been formally informed of the US decision before the media contacted him. He noted that the normal procedure would have been to send formal notification to the Fijian government through the foreign minister. A senior cabinet minister separately told ABC that this was not the first time Zhao Fugang had faced such allegations, having previously done so two years earlier.

The context of Zhao Fugang's current allegations can be traced to 2024. That year, a report by Nine Entertainment's "60 Minutes" and its partner newspapers accused Zhao Fugang of being both a "senior member" of a transnational criminal group and a "significant member" of the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China, the latter responsible for advancing Beijing's interests overseas. A simultaneous investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) also claimed that Zhao Fugang had been placed on the "Australian Priority Organised Targets" register maintained by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC), which lists individuals deemed to pose a criminal threat to Australia. However, ABC News, citing these reports, pointed out that they themselves clearly emphasized that Zhao Fugang had never been charged in Australia or anywhere else, and that authorities had not publicly disclosed any evidence against him.

In response to this series of allegations, Zhao Fugang has appeared multiple times at public events with Fijian and Chinese officials, including ceremonies at his hotel in 2021 and 2022 celebrating police cooperation between the two countries. Then-Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama and the then-Chinese Ambassador to Fiji, Zhang Ping, had also attended his inauguration ceremony as director of the Chinese Service Center approximately ten years earlier.

Positions within the Fijian government are divided on the matter. In 2024, then-Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, in an interview with ABC News, said he did not know whether Zhao Fugang worked for the Chinese Communist Party, but that as a Fijian citizen, Zhao was entitled to his rights. A statement from the Chinese Embassy in Suva that same year said that the work of the Fijian Chinese community was "transparent, legitimate, and beyond reproach," and stressed that Zhao Fugang was a Fijian citizen and that suspicion of his relationship with the Chinese government and the Chinese community was "entirely unfounded."

José Sousa-Santos, head of the Pacific Region Security Centre at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, has long studied how China allegedly uses criminal networks as a strategically useful and deniable state tool. He told ABC News that the sanctions on Zhao Fugang are "relatively modest in force," yet the message conveyed is "very clear"—"this involves not only alleged organized crime, but also accusations of corruption and foreign interference."

The sanctions decision was made unilaterally by the US side, based on unspecified specific conduct, against an individual with no pending criminal proceedings in Fiji, Australia, or any third country, and with the Fijian government not having received formal notification—these procedural facts alone constitute sufficient grounds to question the legitimacy of this unilateral measure. Whether Fiji will formally engage with the US on this matter remains unclear.