Tonga’s missing sky millions re-emerge in law suit

Chinese money, a princess and a photo

Fourteen years and more back, US$24 million was wired from a Chinese Government account to the Kingdom of Tonga’s government. Beijing insisted it was ‘grant aid’. Unlike the infamous court jester money, the money reached the offices of two prime ministers. Then it went to a Hong Kong based company controlled by Princess Royal Salote Mafile’o Pilolevu and was never seen again.

Tonga’s longest ever serving commoner member of parliament, ‘Akilisi Pohiva, tried finding it. When he became prime minister in 2014 he kept at it, winning a significant court victory in 2018, but died in 2019 none the wiser on where the  ‘Tongasat’ - or Friendly Islands Satellite Communications - money had gone. Pohiva’s death and now 70-year-old Pilolevu’s stubborn stonewalling of questions effectively ended the pursuit of Tongasat’s millions. 

Then, like a ghost, Tongasat re-appeared in a 50-page Supreme Court libel judgment dated July 29, 2022. Chief Justice Michael Whitten had before him plaintiff Mele ‘Amanaki, general secretary of the Public Service Association (PSA), who was suing the government owned and now defunct Tonga Weekly and its editor Faka’osi Maama. At one stage ancient Tonga lawyer and politician Clive Edwards, a director of the newspaper, was also a defendant but by judgment day, he was no longer. While failing to answer where the money was, the ruling reveals how a 34 year long princely operation scarred the kingdom of 100,000 commoners.

Tongasat background

An explanation on Tongasat is necessary. In my Tonga Royal Businesses piece, the basics are there. Importantly Tongasat, first thought of in 1988 and brought to life in Nuku’alofa in 1990, was real. Unlike many other royal enterprises, it was not a scam. It involved slots in space over the Equator, where broadcast satellites could be parked into geostationary orbit. Each nation, whether they needed them or not, had designated slots. Tonga was not using seven slots and a visiting American, Mats Nilson, had the clever idea of creating a company that would take Tonga’s designated slots, and rent them out. The government of the day, then under the next absolute control of King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, went along with it, without any public discussion.