The Fiji Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) analysed 304 suspicious transactions reports (STR) last year.
As a result of that analysis, 165 STRs were filed for future intelligence reference and 125 case dissemination reports (CDRs) or spontaneously disseminated intelligence products were issued to law enforcement agencies, nine alert and instruction notices issued to financial institutions, and five cases were linked to other cases already disseminated.
The Fiji FIU 2024 annual report said based on the number of dissemination reports, the top two possible underlying criminal activities identified in the STRs were scams (38 per cent) and tax crimes (26 per cent).
These were followed by fraud (14 per cent), corruption and bribery (10 per cent), illicit drug crimes (7 per cent), breach of regulatory policies and guidelines (3 per cent) and sexual exploitation (2 per cent).
It stated while scams were reported in a large number of CDRs, in terms of transaction value of CDRs, tax crimes (86 per cent) generated the highest transaction values.
Last year, the Fiji FIU disseminated 237 intelligence products to law enforcement agencies, regulatory bodies and government ministries – a decrease from 429 intelligence products disseminated in 2023.
It attributed the decrease to its streamlining of financial intelligence processes and building capacity within law enforcement agencies to directly extract and interpret financial data from the FIU database.
It said as a result, law enforcement agencies extracted 1334 financial data reports from the FIU last year compared to the 111 financial data reports extracted the year before.
“Out of the 237 intelligence products disseminated in 2024, 125 products were CDRs to law enforcement agencies – a decrease from 163 CDRs disseminated in 2023,” the report stated.
It said those CDRs were developed directly from STRs received in 2024 and prior to 2024 and contained information on 140 individuals and one entity.
“In 2024, 57 per cent (71) of CDRs were disseminated to the FPF (Fiji Police Force) and 25 per cent (31) of CDRs were disseminated to FRCS (Fiji Revenue and Customs Service).”
The same year, it also disseminated 66 intelligence products directly requested by enforcement agencies such as FPF, FICAC and FRCS; and those reports contained information on 168 individuals and 65 entities.
The Fiji FIU received a total of 6,139,750 financial transaction and other reports which were used to develop intelligence products; and these reports consisted of STR, cash transaction reports (CTR), threshold transaction reports (TTR) and electronic funds transfer report (EFTRs) which are submitted by financial institutions. It made 697 enquiries to financial institutions and government agencies for further information to analyse STRs and develop other intelligence products; of which 257 enquiries were made to finance institutions and 440 enquiries made to government agencies.
