Former Fiji prime minister Frank Bainimarama has been sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for three years, after the Fiji High Court found him guilty of making an unwarranted demand with menace. The ruling, reported by RNZ from local coverage, marks another serious legal setback for the former military commander and coup leader, who has already served jail time in a separate case.
According to the report, the court found that Bainimarama used his position as prime minister in 2021 to pressure then-acting police commissioner Rusiate Tudravu into dismissing two officers. The case centred on whether that conduct amounted to an offence under Fiji’s Crimes Act. The court concluded that it did, and Judge Thushara Rajasinghe imposed the suspended sentence after Bainimarama was found guilty on 2 October.
The suspended term means Bainimarama will not go to jail for this conviction unless he commits another offence during the three-year period. That legal outcome is significant because it lets the court mark the seriousness of the offence while avoiding immediate imprisonment. It also leaves open the possibility of custody if he reoffends.
RNZ said Bainimarama was the first person in Fiji convicted under this specific offence, making the case notable beyond his own political career. The maximum penalty for the charge is 12 years’ imprisonment, so the sentence itself sits well below the ceiling available to the court.
Bainimarama had pleaded not guilty. The court nevertheless accepted the prosecution’s account that he had improperly used his office to press for personnel action inside the police service. In practical terms, that finding reaches back to the way power was exercised inside Fiji’s political system in 2021, when the former prime minister was still at the centre of government.
The ruling also lands against a background of multiple legal problems for Bainimarama. He resigned from parliament in March 2023 after receiving a three-year suspension for sedition. In a separate case, he was jailed in May last year for perverting the course of justice in relation to a police investigation involving the University of the South Pacific. He was released in November 2024 after serving six months of a one-year sentence, following a review by the Fiji Corrections Service.
Together, those cases show a steep fall for a figure who once dominated Fijian politics and military life. The latest sentence does not change the fact that he remains a highly consequential public figure, but it does add another conviction to a record that is increasingly defined by the courts rather than by the premiership he once held.
The immediate question now is whether Bainimarama will appeal or whether this case will stand as another final judgment in a period of legal and political reckoning for Fiji’s former strongman. For now, the court has made clear that his office did not shield him from criminal responsibility.
