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Cocaine worth more than $10 million replaced with flour in Fiji drug trial

More than 39 kilograms of cocaine stored as court evidence in Fiji has gone missing, with some replaced by flour, in what police are investigating as internal corruption.

More than $10 million worth of cocaine stored at a Fiji court as evidence in a long-running drug-trafficking trial has been replaced with flour.

The Long Sip
What happened

Over 39 kilograms of cocaine held as evidence at Fiji's Suva High Court has been replaced with flour and is now effectively missing.

The detail

The cocaine was evidence in the long-running drug-trafficking trial of Fiji-Canadian national Joshua Aziz Rahman, whose conviction was reinstated earlier this year.

What it means

Fiji police say a person of interest is currently overseas, and the incident is the latest in a string of drug-related corruption cases that led Fiji to disband its narcotics bureau last year.

Full story at ABC News & Headlines

What readers are saying

YogaTeacherEm
It is concerning that the discrepancies were only discovered when authorities went to destroy the evidence this month. Given that Fiji evidence remains in the courtroom throughout the entire appeal process, there were years where these bags could have been tampered with unnoticed.
raj_rhodes
Replacing evidence with flour shows a complete breakdown in secure registry management.
Kevozza
The police statement says the person of interest is already overseas, so good luck getting them back for questioning now. If the registry management was this easy to bypass, they need to look at who had the keys during that whole five-year appeal period.
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