Sada Reddy

Wellington, June 2 NZPA - The Government is powerless to stop a senior member of Fiji's interim regime coming and going from New Zealand.

Reserve Bank Governor Sada Reddy was appointed Fiji's Reserve Bank Governor earlier this year. He replaced Savenuca Narube, who was removed from office.

Mr Reddy already has New Zealand residency and is believed to be in New Zealand qualifying for a permanent residency visa under which he will be able to come and go at will, despite travel sanctions, The New Zealand Herald reported.

New Zealand implemented travel restrictions against members of the Fiji regime following its December 2006 coup. However, Mr Reddy already had residency and, short of changing the law, nothing could be done.

A spokesman for Mr McCully told NZPA that as long as Mr Reddy spent the required amount of time in New Zealand to maintain residency, "there's nothing that can be done".

"The only way that anything can be done is via a law change," he said.

"The Government looked at whether it was prepared to take significant steps to change rules to allow residency to be revoked but decided that, at the moment, it's not the path they want to go down."

That was because it did not want to be seen as being no better than Fiji.

Australia can revoke residency if a person's actions were contrary to foreign policy interests.

"I do not feel comfortable about the fact that people who would otherwise be subject to the sanctions are able to be treated in this way when others would be banned from New Zealand but that's how our rules work," Mr McCully told the newspaper.