An Australian man is wanted by Fiji police for allegedly orchestrating the importation of more than four tonnes of methamphetamine — the largest drug seizure in the island nation’s history.
Sydney man Sam Amine, 49, was labelled a “drug kingpin” by a Fiji High Court judge last year — when nine Fijians were given the most severe sentences ever handed down for drug crime — but has never faced charges over his alleged involvement.
“We have already rounded up the local crime syndicates,” Fiji Police Assistant Commissioner Mesake Waqa told Foreign Correspondent.
“We will only rest once we charge those responsible, those international crime syndicates.
“It is my wish for Sam Amine to face trial here in Fiji.”
Fiji police want Sam Amine to face trial for his alleged role in a transnational meth importation. (Foreign Correspondent: Mark Hiney)
The massive consignment of drugs seized in January 2024 was supplied by the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, stockpiled in Fiji, and destined for the lucrative Australian and New Zealand markets, authorities have confirmed.
Amine helped arrange and pay to get the drugs into the country before they were stored at his warehouse in the premier tourist hub of Denarau for several days, according to evidence accepted by a Fiji High Court judge.
Senior Australian law enforcement sources told the ABC they believed Amine was “a major regional target” and “a door” for large-scale drug importations from the Pacific to Australia.
Assistant Commissioner Waqa said some of the methamphetamine was exported via commercial air carriers bound for Australia before the larger consignment was seized by police.
Mesake Waqa is determined to bring Sam Amine to Fiji to face justice. ( Foreign Correspondent: Sissy Reyes)
Fiji Police say Amine has owned property and run a gym in Denarau for almost a decade. They suspect he has funded local criminal syndicates on an ongoing basis.
His properties are now subject to restraining orders and a forfeiture application in the civil jurisdiction of the Fiji High Court, which heard evidence they were purchased with proceeds of crime, to be used in the import and export of drugs.
Amine had left Fiji before the drugs were seized. Four months later, in Sydney, he was caught supplying a large commercial quantity of drugs and a firearm to an undercover police officer. He pleaded guilty and is due to be sentenced in July.
“Our undercover program and the way that we investigate these matters is very proactive, and we try to front-load that on established criminals,” NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Scott Cook said.
“People that we put before the court for serious criminal matters for ongoing drug supply and distribution are people that we focus on in New South Wales — we focus on the coordinators and controllers here.
“If it’s advantageous to us to have those people arrested in other countries and dealt with in other countries, we will do that, and if other countries are seeking to do that, wherever possible, and within Australian law, we will assist them to achieve their aims.”
Scott Cook says NSW Police will work with law enforcement worldwide to ensure justice is served. (Foreign Correspondent: Shaun Kingma)
Amine declined to answer questions from the ABC, with his lawyer saying it was “due to the ongoing nature of proceedings”.
In a statement provided by his defence lawyer in Sydney, Daniel Wakim said: “My client’s silence should not in any way be seen of [sic] deemed as an admission to any criminal liability or associations.”
Alleged links to organised crime in Australia
The pursuit of Amine in both countries reveals concerns about larger, sophisticated transnational criminal networks operating between Fiji and Australia to facilitate the movement of vast quantities of drugs.
NSW Police told the Supreme Court at a bail hearing in September 2024 that Amine was connected to two of the most notorious criminal syndicates in Sydney — the Alameddine crime network and the KVT.
Fiji Police say they are monitoring the influence of the KVT gang in Fiji. (Foreign Correspondent: Stephanie March)
NSW Police have described the Alameddine network as a transnational, serious organised crime network based in Sydney that is involved in large-scale illicit drug importation.
The KVT is a street gang consisting mostly of young Pacific Islander men, many Fijian, that NSW police say is also “associated with the highest levels of serious and organised crime”.
“They’re importing drugs, they’re selling drugs, distributing drugs … it’s pretty serious,” Assistant Commissioner Cook said.
“We’ve hit KVT particularly hard recently because of what they’ve been involved in.”
Fiji Police say Amine’s links to the KVT is one of the reasons he is on their radar.
“Sam Amine, he’s always been the person of interest when it comes to drugs in Fiji. This is because of his involvement with KVT and of his assets here and his association with the local crime syndicates here in Fiji,” Assistant Commissioner Waqa said.
On the radar
Amine had been on authorities’ radar in Australia and Fiji since at least 2019.
In February that year he and another Australian were placed under surveillance in Fiji at the request of the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
The AFP provided intelligence the men were carrying a suspicious amount of currency, according to Fiji court documents.
Having just arrived in the country, Amine and the second Australian were covertly surveilled meeting two other foreigners at a Gloria Jeans in Suva.
Eventually each of the men was charged with drug offences stemming from different incidents.
One man, Canadian Joshua Rahman, was caught in a raid five days later when police found 39 bars of cocaine worth about 30 million Fijian dollars ($19.2 million) in a house he shared with his father.
Rahman successfully appealed his conviction earlier this year, arguing he did not know the drugs were inside the house, and is now awaiting retrial in Fiji.
Sam Amine has owned property and run a gym in Denarau, according to Fijian police. (Instagram)
The other foreign national present at the meeting, Samuel Vaisevuraki, was arrested later that month and was eventually jailed for importing methamphetamine into New Zealand.
The second Australian, Giuseppe Mangolini, was charged later that year by the AFP for importing cocaine into Sydney via Fiji Airways, but the charges were dropped after the cocaine went missing from a Fiji Police station.
Mangolini’s co-accused, Justin Ho, became a significant figure for authorities; he was subsequently identified as the Fijian ringleader of the four-tonne meth importation and according to a witness in the case, was the “right-hand man” of Amine.
The Fijian government says the drug problem is a national emergency. (Foreign Correspondent)
Amine was also arrested and interviewed by police immediately after the 2019 Gloria Jeans meeting but released without charge.
A subsequent search of a property where Amine had a unit, carried out by Fiji Police, led to a single charge for unlawful possession of anabolic steroids, but the charges were later dropped.
Two years later, Amine’s connections to Sydney’s criminal underworld were more publicly exposed, albeit somewhat inadvertently.
In June 2021, he was abducted at gunpoint from his waterfront home in Sans Souci, pulled into a stolen BMW and taken to a vacant house in Padstow. His kidnappers assaulted him repeatedly and demanded a $3-million payment to secure his release.
Signs of drug use are obvious in parts of Fiji. (Foreign Correspondent: Stephanie March)
Amine made a dramatic escape by jumping through a flyscreen window in the middle of the night, after being stripped to his underwear and while his hands were still bound by cable-ties.
After a neighbour phoned police, officers conducted a dramatic manhunt to catch his kidnappers.
Amine told police at the scene: “I got punched in the head about 50,000 times. They kept hitting me in the head with a machete and gun. They just kept saying they wanted money.”
At the time, NSW Police revealed that Amine was “known” to authorities and the ABC now understands police believed the kidnapping and extortion attempt was over a drug-related debt.
It is unclear whether Amine was under surveillance in late 2023 when the massive consignment of methamphetamine arrived in Fiji.
The meth case and the Australian ‘kingpin’
The more than four tonnes of methamphetamine seized in Fiji was first unloaded from an unflagged yacht onto a local barge on the high seas before being offloaded at Fantasy Island near Denarau two days before Christmas in 2023.
Once ashore the drugs were stored at Amine’s Denarau warehouse, which was being rented by the man later convicted of being the ringleader of the operation, Justin Ho.
“The drugs were stored in his facility. I would think that with such a large amount of methamphetamine, Sam Amine would’ve had to have a say in the drugs being moved to his warehouse,” said John Rabuku, deputy director at Fiji’s Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP).
Ho, who rented the property, was known to police from 2018 when he allegedly attempted to export cocaine to Australia via Fiji Airways.
John Rabuku has raised concerns about the influence of drug syndicates on Fijian businesses. (Foreign Correspondent: Sissy Reyes)
The extent of Amine’s alleged organisational role “orchestrating the shipment” was revealed at the trial in evidence by David Heritage, one of the other nine Fijians ultimately convicted.
Heritage ran a marine repairs business in Denarau and was sentenced to 55 years’ imprisonment for his role as one of the local leaders of the drug operation.
He said Amine approached him, at first to engage his business to look after his jet skis and outboard motors, and later asked him to facilitate the shipment of drugs.
Heritage received a 30,000 Fijian dollar ($19,200) advance from Justin Ho and expected a two-million Fijian dollar ($1.2 million) payment in total upon completion of the operation.
Fijian court hands down toughest-ever drug sentences after $1.37bn meth haul
According to Heritage’s evidence, the co-ordinates and instructions were provided in a group chat which included him, Amine and Ho, on an encrypted platform called Threema, a messaging app known to authorities for being popular with drug traffickers, money launderers and organised crime syndicates.
“David Heritage was saying Sam Amine had asked me to bring the drugs in and paid me $30,000, which came through Justin Ho for me to arrange all the logistics of the drugs being brought into the country,” Mr Rabuku said.
Due to end-to-end encryption, prosecutors say they were unable to access forensic evidence that implicated who else was involved.
“We were unable to extract anything from their phones that indicated that Sam Amine really had given him the $30,000,” Mr Rabuku said.
Return to Australia
Ultimately, Threema was Amine’s undoing.
In a sting operation, an undercover NSW Police officer posing as a buyer caught Amine orchestrating a sophisticated drug and gun supply operation in chat groups on the same encrypted app.
Amine, his nephew Nabil Allouche and Manly Sea Eagles and Fiji International rugby league player Brandon Wakeham were arrested in May 2024, although Wakeham’s charges were later dropped.
Allouche, who identified himself as “DiCaprio” on Threema, acted as the runner and driver, while his uncle negotiated the supply, price and quantity of drugs and of an unregistered Norinco pistol.
Police said they seized cash as they targeted the drug supply operation. (Supplied: NSW Police)
Allouche pleaded guilty to large commercial drug supply, commercial drug supply, and supplying an unregistered firearm and was sentenced in February to six years and two months in prison, with a non-parole period of three years and six months.
As Amine awaits sentencing in Sydney in July, prosecutors in Fiji have pushed forward targeting his assets.
The ODPP in Fiji by seeking to recover what is said to be proceeds of crime, has its sight on property estimated to be worth 8.8 million Fijian dollars ($5.6 million).
A bid to dismiss the state’s forfeiture application was thrown out late last month after Amine’s legal representative failed to appear in court.
In an interim judgement, the Fiji High Court accepted that Amine’s corporate entity Denarau Fitness Pte Ltd, which trades as a gym, had no legitimate source of income over several years.
Seventh narco sub discovered in waters near Australia
Mr Rabuku said it raised concerns about how compromised both established businesses and new businesses were becoming with the drug trade in Fiji.
“You could see that from the transactions that are happening on Sam Amine’s account, because you ask yourself the question, ‘Why are you giving money to Sam Amine when he runs a gym?'” he said.
The NSW Crime Commission has also frozen $10 million of Amine’s assets in Australia.
NSW Police argued at his bail hearing that Amine was well accustomed to a “lavish lifestyle”.
In one of the last messages he sent to the undercover police officer on the other end of a Threema chat that led to his arrest, Amine anticipated income rather than trouble with the law.
He said he would have quality cocaine available soon: “I got good nose coming next week too.”
WATCH the first instalment of Foreign Correspondent’s special investigation into drug trafficking in the Pacific, Cartel Paradise, TONIGHT at 7.55pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.