Tonga’s royal businesses

Swimming with sharks Chapter 4.3

In the last decade of Taufa’ahau’s reign, his two eldest children struggled with each other in plundering the state. 

Tupuoto’a (later George V) got the power utility, the internet domain naming business, a brewery and a domestic airline. His sister, Pilolevu Tuita got the universe, or the best bits for parking satellites in. It has made her a multi-millionaire. 

I was in the same hotel when it all began with Mats Nilson in 1990. 

Unlike many of the foreign characters associated with Tonga, Nilson was no scam artist; he was a hard-edged businessman. A senior official of the Washington based International Telecommunications Satellite Consortium (Intelsat), he went to Tonga for a holiday after the death of his wife. 

Intelsat had a gentlemen’s agreement among nations over the placement of communications satellite in fixed orbit over the Equator. 

Tonga, 1958. UK National Archives