The suspect’s identification by intelligence agencies raises big questions for one of Australia’s neighbours and about China’s attempts to wield influence in the Pacific.
On a muggy Fijian morning in December 2021, Fiji’s police commissioner joined a wealthy Suva businessman and China’s ambassador at a “security exchange” symposium in the nation’s capital.
Confidential reports created by two federal security agencies and sighted by this masthead allege Zhao is a senior member of a crime network facilitating “large illicit drug shipments” to Australia.The intelligence files also name Zhao, who denies all wrongdoing and has never been charged with any criminal offence, as a suspected member of an organised criminal syndicate posing a “significant and enduring threat in the region”.
The intelligence also provides the clearest example yet of claims senior Australian officials have made privately, and US officials publicly, about China’s use of people like Zhao to advance its foreign policy interests. It’s an accusation disputed by Beijing as conspiratorial “cold war” thinking, with the Chinese embassy in Fiji stressing that China’s work is “transparent, above board and beyond reproach”.
Work in Suva on the WG Friendship Plaza, built by WG International Real Estate, a locally registered Chinese company, was suspended after questions about construction standards and other issues.
Zhao has variously and openly held key “united front” roles, including as the secretary-general of the Fiji China Council for Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification, and as a member of the first council of the Oceanic Alliance of the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China., the billionaire and political donor who was sensationally expelled from Australia in 2019 based on ASIO advice that he was at risk of interfering in Australia’s political system on behalf of Beijing.
With Zhao’s help, China “got in very, very deep and very, very close” to Bainimarama’s government, the ANU’s Graeme Smith said.Reporting in state-controlled outlets suggests Zhao also played a key role promoting China’s security interests in Fiji. In 2016, company registry documents show that Zhao set up at his hotel an official Overseas Chinese Service Centre.
The cable identified one of Zhao’s suspected key associates as a Chinese-Fijian businessman convicted of drug trafficking in 2004 who is the business partner of a senior Fijian politician. Australian intelligence reports seen by this masthead describe suspicions that Zhao has been connected to international drug trafficking networks targeting Australia since at least 2004.
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