30/07/2026
Corporate Sector Still Lacks True Zero Tolerance for Harassment: FWRM
The South Pacific Stock Exchange (SPX) and Reserve Bank of Fiji (RBF) ‘knowingly jeopardised the protection of female employees' after Sun Insurance engaged a senior executive who was recently convicted of sex offences.
The Fiji Women's Rights Movement (FWRM) is deeply concerned that leading SPX-listed company Sun Insurance failed to respond to multiple queries sent on e-mail from significant shareholders expressing their strong concern about the hiring of Mohammad Nouzab Fareed, convicted last week and now on remand for two counts of indecent assaults.
After the company’s failure to respond directly to shareholder concerns, FWRM has confirmed the Fareed matter was also reported in writing to both the SPX and RBF with no apparent response.
The facts surrounding Fareed's conviction last week have now been widely reported in the media.
When Sun Insurance made the decision to hire Fareed, FWRM acknowledges, he had the benefit of being presumed innocent until a court passed judgement.
However, Fareed was already convicted for indecent assault in December 2021 ([FJMC 41, Criminal Case 174/2] when the company hired him as the Chief Transformation Consultant.
Fareed was sentenced to 14 months' imprisonment suspended for two years by then-chief magistrate Usaia Ratuvili in a widely publicised case within the business community as he resigned from his previous position as Chief Executive Officer of Fijian Holdings Ltd in December 2019.
Fareed's conviction was quashed by then-High Court judge Salesi Temo in 2022.
“The silence, lack of curiousity and foot-shuffling of SPX and RBF, whose primary responsibilities include market regulation, is astonishing,” said FWRM Executive Director Nalini Singh.
“It is disturbing that the RBF did not even apply its own “fit and proper” fitness test policy to the hiring of employees,” she added.
FWRM believes that the SPX and RBF's lack of focus and urgency addressing multiple written shareholder warnings about a sex offender has clearly jeopardised the protection that the female employees at Sun Insurance should have as a matter of right.
“Sexual violence and indecent assaults are dynamics built around the power imbalance between predator and prey. That the SPX and RBF appear to have seen nothing of concern, despite written warnings, in the power dynamic between this executive officer and the female staff he led is beyond belief,” said Singh.
“When regulatory protections and barriers repeatedly fail to respond, the system itself must be reformed. We need to pull out the rubbish and make sure the prevention of sexual violence overrides anything else the SPX and RBF have convinced themselves might be a more pressing consideration in how they regulate our capital markets.”
“It is terrifying to think that other listed companies may be considering that Sun Insurance sets a precedent for other sex or non-sex convictions or behaviour patterns to be hidden from public sight and put beyond the reach of regulators,” she warned.
FWRM calls for the adoption of a compulsory zero tolerance policy to Sexual Exploitation Abuse and Harassment (SEAH) by all companies publicly listed, and offers training for the leadership of these companies.
Training must start from the top, at the highest levels of leadership.
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For media queries please contact FWRM Communications Officer Serelisoni Moceica on 2136547 or