The US State Department has designated Zhao Fugang, a Chinese Fijian businessman and director of the Overseas Chinese Service Center in Fiji, for involvement in “significant corruption” on behalf of China-based actors. The decision, announced on Thursday 8 October, makes Zhao and his immediate family generally ineligible to enter the United States.
The department said Zhao abused his public position by paying bribes to Fijian citizens to advance the interests of Chinese government, business and criminal actors. The US embassy in Suva said there is an established pattern of criminals with China ties operating across the Pacific, and that Zhao’s conduct left Fiji exposed to foreign influence. It said corruption deters investment, supports organised crime, enables illegal migration and weakens trust in government.
Zhao denied the allegations in a letter to the US embassy, saying he had never paid bribes to Fijian citizens and faces no criminal proceedings in Fiji. He said the statement made serious claims without identifying any specific conduct, had harmed his and his family’s reputation, and should be taken down until he could respond. His lawyers told the ABC they had not known about the investigation. Fiji’s Foreign Affairs Minister Sakiasi Ditoka said he had not been formally notified, which would normally happen through his office.
The claims are not new. In 2024, Nine’s 60 Minutes and partner newspapers alleged that Zhao was a senior member of a transnational crime syndicate and of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project reported that he was on the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission’s list of priority targets, while stressing that he had never been charged. Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said at the time that he did not know whether Zhao worked for the Chinese government, and China’s embassy in Suva called suggestions of such links groundless. Zhao has appeared at several events with Chinese officials, including ceremonies at his hotel in 2021 and 2022 marking police cooperation between China and Fiji.
José Sousa-Santos, head of the Pacific Regional Security Hub at the University of Canterbury, described the sanctions as light but said the message was clear. He has written that China has used alleged criminal networks as “plausibly deniable tools of the state”, and said the case raises wider questions of corruption and foreign interference.
