The Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption is currently investigating 60 cases of alleged fraud by individuals and some employees of the Housing Authority.

These cases are in relation to the illegal allocation of lots and abuse of tender processes, which resulted in the controversial and inappropriate owning of lots.

This has been revealed by the Chair of the Standing Committee of Public Accounts, Esrom Emanuel.

He made the revelation when updating parliament on the review report by the Office of the Auditor General on a special investigation on Housing Authority.

Emanuel says so far one case has been taken to court, and there are hopes that FICAC facilitates the remaining cases.

Esrom says the Committee has agreed that those implicated in the investigation should be taken to task as an act of employing strong deterrence and sending correct disciplinary signals to members of the public and employees of the Housing Authority.

“The Committee’s ultimate objective is to see that the key outcome of the investigation is a system overhaul at the Housing Authority that ensures full-proof administrational and operational processes and practical governance policies are put in place to eliminate gaps that might bring to existence any violation that stimulates corrupt practices at the Housing Authority.”

The Assistant Minister says another issue that came up was the missing files.

He says there were 12 customer files, including six files for Tacirua Subdivision and four files for Matavolivoli Subdivision, which were not provided to the Office of the Auditor-General for review.

He adds that the missing files meant that the officers or the Housing Authority staff were trying to hide from being investigated.

The report is expected to be discussed in Parliament later this month.