Amrit Terminates FBC CEO Amid Allegation of Massive Pay Out

An investigation will soon be called to look into the spending of close to $94 million of Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) fee or grant from the Government to Fijian Broadcasting Corporation (FBC) since 2008. FBC board chair Ajay Amrit alleges that since Riyaz Sayed-Khaiyum took over as CEO in 2008, the Government had paid out a total of $93,782,811.45 in PSB fee to FBC. Mr Amrit made the comments while announcing the termination of Mr Sayed-Khaiyum’s employment as the chief executive officer of FBC yesterday.

He also claimed that Mr SayedKhaiyum was earning considerably more than Government ministers and even the Prime Minister. However, he said they were finding difficulties to gather information on how the hefty salary was being paid to the previous CEO. “I’ll be honest with you, we are finding it very difficult to find out where we need to go to find this information; first we went to the public enterprise, they said no, then we went to the Finance Ministry so we are just working our way through,” Mr Amrit said.

“But by looking at past payments, his salary scale with benefits is approximately $32,000 a month,” he further claimed.

He added that the investigation had not started as they would first need to find out how such payments were made and its breakdown in terms of the former CEO’s salary.

“Further, as we have no confidence in the ability of the current CEO Mr Riyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, we have chosen to legally terminate his employment status,” Mr Amrit said in a statement yesterday.

“The CFO, Mr Vimlesh Sagar will act in this position until such time as the board can confidently appoint a person with the appropriate commercial competency and

attributes needed to lead this company.”

He said the Government grant to

FBC would be reviewed.

“The board will work with staff and management to ensure that

FBC is a financially viable and a self-sustaining commercial business, while honouring its PSB responsibilities,” he said.

Mr Amrit claimed that it was quite obvious that without the PSB cash injection from Government over the past 10-plus years, FBC would be classed as being technically insolvent.

“Of greater concern to us was that we could not see a robust strategic plan going forward that clearly identified how the commercial business of FBC would be selfsustaining,” he said.

“The leadership over the past 10-plus years has totally relied on Government revenue to continue its operations – this is certainly not what the new board’s intent is.”

He assured all hardworking and diligent staff and senior management that FBC would be business as usual.

“We appreciate all that you do at

FBC and it will be business as usual, but moving towards new goals and new opportunities,” he said. “Our collective objective and commitment to our staff, shareholders and our valued listeners & viewers remain.”

Attempts to get a comment from terminated FBC CEO Riyaz SayedKhaiyum were unsuccessful by the time this edition went to press.