7. Speight, son of Sam: 'Failed businessman'

Speight of Violence 14

For the coup 45-year-old Speight had renamed himself Ilikimi Naitini and adopted 'The Cause' which he could not easily define and whose language, Fijian, he could not speak. For weeks ahead he would identify with the vanua but could not easily say what it meant or even what it really was in modern Fiji. A mixed-race fourth-generation descendant of a white settler in Fiji, he was the son of businessman Sam Speight, who was elected to Parliament for the SVT under the name Savenaca Tokainavo. One of his political rivals had been Iliesa Duvuloco.

Iliesa Duvuloco

George Speight's paternal grandmother was from Naivicula in Wainibuka, about 10 kilometres from Korovou in Tailevu, north of Suva. His mother was from Ra in the western sugarcane belt of Viti Levu. Speight had a middle-class upbringing in Fiji, including Suva Grammar, then went on to an education at the Seventh Day Adventist Andrews University in Michigan, United States. Speight was one of five people sponsored at Andrews by a powerful benefactor, one-time finance minister Jim Ah Koy, one of Fiji's wealthiest individuals. He secured degrees in marketing, management and finance, which enabled him to set up as a businessman, spending several years job-hopping in Australia. In Brisbane he was involved in a pyramid investment scheme and narrowly escaped arrest. He was married in Australia to Shauna Bull and had two children. By 2000 his marriage was over and he was living with 21-year-old Torika Rawlinson, who had a child by him.

Back in Fiji around 1997 Speight became managing director for insurance brokering firm, Heath Fiji Limited, a subsidiary of an international insurance company.