Downtown Koror, Palau's largest city. Photo: RNZ Pacific
A new investigative report from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) has exposed details of a Chinese Communist Party and Triad push for political influence in Palau.
It said the small nation is a key hotspot in the growing rivalry between China and the West.
And the report said organised criminals with links to the Chinese Communist Party are trying to find a way in.
The project's lead editor for the Pacific Aubrey Belford explained to Pacific Waves that this is a report they have been working on for most of the year involving himself, the Pacific team and Palau-based journalist Bernadette Carreon.
He revealed that this influence is not restricted to Palau or even the Pacific.
"It's actually a pattern repeated across a lot of the region and also in Australia, New Zealand, South-east Asia," he said.
"Basically, as China is becoming more assertive geopolitically, sometimes they've had their interests presented essentially by proxy, by business people and sometimes organised criminals. We focused in on Palau because it is a country where there has been a really interesting case of this happening.
"Palau is a very small country, just 18,000 people. And what we have found is that there has been an interlinked series of Chinese business people involved in quite audacious business plans for the country.
"And also some illegal business, for example, we found illegal gambling where hundreds of workers from China were coming out to Palau and running internet gambling sites.
"What we found is that there were links between these businesses and Chinese organised crime - the Triads - and also to the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP. We also found that when we looked into how these businesses got set up in the country they had made a lot of links with members of the local elite including two former presidents."
Listen to Aubrey Belford on Pacific Waves
Belford said they spoke to most of the Palauans that they wrote about and found they were quite forthcoming.
"One of those we spoke to was former Palau President Johnson Toribiong who is a lawyer. He is a friend and business partner of a long-time Chinese expatriate there who is the head of an organisation organising expat Chinese in Palau and which is linked to the Chinese Communist Party.
"We found that this individual's company was leasing the land he was operating the land on which one of these illegal gambling operations was found. And he was leasing the land from former President Toribiong's cousin who is currently a minister in Cabinet.
"It's a very small place and everywhere we looked we found that Palauans were welcoming these figures in, sometimes partnering them in business."
Photo: 123rf
Bedford explained that Palau has remained a diplomatic backer of Taiwan, unlike some Pacific nations. Some of the business figures have begun pushing Beijing's interests in Palau.
"What we've seen in Palau is that some of the business proxies were being shut down as locals resisted the influence and also there's been some strong foreign pressure," said Belford.
"Palau is in the Compact of Free Association with the United States so it is very closely tied to the US both financially and militarily. In this case we haven't had great success but what it does shows is the kind of methods used all across the Pacific.
"There are links between some of the business people we look at and other Pacific countries.
"For example, some of the people involved with the main characters in our story is a senior Chinese Triad figure known as Broken Tooth who was jailed in the 1990s/early 2000s for being an organised crime leader. He has now reinvented himself as an international businessman who is promoting Chinese Communist Party interests abroad.
"He tried to set up a casino in Palau and his local secret society organisation was set up with the help of some prominent Palauans. But when we looked into his network we found a lot of the people affiliated with the Chinese organised crime were travelling around the region using Vanuatu passports. So, it is interlinked and this is something with implications for the whole of the Pacific."
Johnson Toribiong Photo: