Among the 10 people arrested in Fiji last week in a major anti-drug operation was the son of a senior pro-China politician from Palau, who presides over his country’s Senate, OCCRP confirmed.
Hokkons Baules told OCCRP on Tuesday that he learned from media reports that his son, Lagomarsino Baules, 38, had been arrested in Fiji.
“There is nothing I can do, he has not communicated,” he said.
Lagomarsino Baules was arrested at a home in Suva alongside Ginna Mukunghoa Choi, a citizen of the Federated States of Micronesia who previously lived in Palau, according to local media reports. Choi had been blacklisted by Palauan authorities in May as an “undesirable alien” for alleged “associations with known drug traffickers,” according to a document from Palau’s National Security Coordination Office obtained by OCCRP.
The arrests come amid heightened concern over booming drug trafficking through the Pacific and growing evidence that China’s government uses criminal networks as proxies to help build ties to local elites in the geopolitically contested region.
Hokkons Baules is a vocal advocate for dropping Palau’s diplomatic recognition of Taiwan and moving closer to China. He has not been accused of any wrongdoing in relation to his son.
Previous OCCRP reporting has revealed how organized crime figures and other questionable businessmen have helped China expand its presence in Palau, a strategic island country of just 16,000 people that is closely allied with the United States.
Last week’s operation allegedly recovered more than two and a half kilograms of methamphetamine from six locations across Fiji, including the Yue Lai Hotel in the Fijian capital of Suva, owned by Zhao Fugang, a China-born businessman and Communist Party loyalist. OCCRP and partners reported last year that Zhao is one of Australia’s highest-priority criminal targets.
Zhao — who has previously denied claims from Australian police that he oversees a regional criminal enterprise involved in drug and human trafficking — declined to comment through his lawyer, Nikheel Nambiar, who told OCCRP that Zhao “doesn’t really have any knowledge about what happened.”
Reporting by OCCRP and partners has also revealed how Zhao has played a key role in building Beijing’s influence in Fiji, which lies further south and is the South Pacific’s leading political and economic hub.
