The Fijian Elections Office has referred former Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem to the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The FEO issued a statement saying the matter is in relation to the probable abuse of office and for corrupting benefits given to, or received by, a public office.<\/p>\n
Saneem is alleged to have unlawfully authorized payments of sitting allowance to the Electoral Commission on numerous occasions during his tenure with FEO.<\/p>\n
The Constitutional Offices Commission had clarified to Saneem that the allowance for the Electoral Commission chair and members remained at the same rate of $500 per person, per meeting.<\/p>\n
It is alleged Saneem continued to give instructions for sitting allowances to be paid to the EC chair and the members for attending events other than meetings, including social functions.<\/p>\n
According to Section 5 of the Electoral Act 2014, it specifies that meetings must be held at such place and such times as determined by the Electoral Commission Chair or a majority of the Commission.<\/p>\n
The EC can also hold meetings virtually.<\/p>\n
The FEO says even with a clear definition of meetings in the Electoral Act and clarification from the COC on payment of allowances, Saneem continued to deviate from this and constantly gave instructions for payment of $500 allowance to the EC Chair and members.<\/p>\n
The matter has been referred to FICAC for further investigations.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, it is also understood that Saneem was stopped from leaving the country last night due to the FICAC investigation.<\/p>\n
Source: FBC News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Fijian Elections Office has referred former Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem to the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC). The FEO issued a statement saying the matter is in relation to the probable abuse of office and for corrupting benefits given to, or received by, a public office. Saneem is alleged to have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiji-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2763"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2765,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2763\/revisions\/2765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}