The first essential distinction is between the founder of The Fiji Times and the family that owns it today.

The Fiji Times was not founded by the Patel family. It was established by George Littleton Griffiths on September 4, 1869, in Levuka, then an important commercial and political centre in Fiji, and remains the country’s oldest continuously operating newspaper. Historical material published by the paper indicates that Griffiths initially worked in partnership with his relative by marriage, J. H. Hobson; the partnership was dissolved in 1870, after which Griffiths continued the operation himself.

The modern owner, Motibhai Group, belongs to a completely different historical line. The group was founded in 1931 by the brothers Motibhai Becharbhai Patel, Prabhudas Becharbhai Patel and Parshottamdas Becharbhai Patel. In 2010, Mahendra “Mac” Motibhai Patel, then the group’s dominant leader, led the acquisition of The Fiji Times from Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited/News Corporation. The group is currently chaired and led by Kirit Prabhudas Patel.

The story therefore contains three distinct founder/owner roles:

George Littleton Griffiths = founder of the newspaper; Motibhai, Prabhudas and Parshottamdas Patel = founders of the Motibhai family business; Mahendra Patel = the central figure behind Motibhai’s 2010 acquisition of The Fiji Times.

George Littleton Griffiths followed a path from printing tradesman to colonial-port entrepreneur to newspaper founder.

According to historical material published by The Fiji Times, Griffiths was born in London on July 29, 1844, the eldest of six children. Another history published by the newspaper describes his family as having backgrounds in architecture, building and timber. He later travelled with his father to Port Chalmers near Dunedin, New Zealand.

In New Zealand he worked as a compositor for Mills, Dick & Co. This matters because Griffiths did not first emerge as a professional political journalist. His original comparative advantage was command of the scarce production technology of nineteenth-century publishing: typesetting, printing and newspaper production.

Reliable information about a formal university education is limited / cannot presently be confirmed. The public record is much clearer about his practical training in printing than about any academic degree.

Choosing Levuka meant more than opening a newspaper; Griffiths was building information infrastructure in a society whose national institutions were still developing.

Griffiths arrived in Fiji around 1868–1869 and founded The Fiji Times in Levuka at about the age of 25. Fiji did not formally become a British colony until 1874, and Levuka was at the time a concentration point for European trade, shipping and political activity. The newspaper therefore predated the maturation of the modern Fijian state.

After the first issue appeared on September 4, 1869, Griffiths became involved in more than journalism. He supported the pigeon-post link between Levuka and Suva, and when formal postal infrastructure was inadequate, The Fiji Times established a mail service in 1870 and even issued its own stamps. Early The Fiji Times therefore functioned partly as a news service, commercial-information network and communications infrastructure.

In 1881 Griffiths launched The Suva Times in the city that would become the national capital. As Fiji’s political and commercial centre shifted, he eventually transferred The Fiji Times to Suva; The Suva Times ceased publication, and The Fiji Times began publishing from Suva in January 1887.

One of Griffiths’ most consequential strategic decisions was therefore allowing the newspaper to migrate with the country’s centre of power rather than remaining tied to Levuka.

Griffiths’ most durable asset was not a small nineteenth-century printing company but brand continuity.

The Fiji Times subsequently survived multiple owners, two world wars, the end of colonial rule, independence, the coups of 1987, 2000 and 2006, and long periods of media regulation. The newspaper itself identifies the Deed of Cession, Fiji’s independence, the world wars, the 1959 Suva disturbances and successive coups among the major events preserved in its reporting history.

The paper’s own commemorative material also portrays Griffiths as a man with a strong sense of civic duty. He and his wife had ten children and adopted another five.

From the beginning, therefore, The Fiji Times occupied a dual position: a commercial company that had to sell newspapers and advertising, and a quasi-public institution that helped determine what Fiji discussed every day.

The clearest modern ownership milestones are 1956, 1987 and 2010.

The newspaper’s historical account states that in February 1956, R. W. Robson, founder of Pacific Publications, bought The Fiji Times from Sir Alport Barker; in 1987 Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd took control; and in 2010 Motibhai Group acquired the paper.

The 1987–2010 phase placed The Fiji Times inside an international media network. The post-2010 arrangement reversed that structure: the newspaper moved from Murdoch’s multinational media system into a deeply Fiji-based family conglomerate whose main businesses were not originally media.

The Patel/Motibhai Family, Group Expansion and Capital Network

The Motibhai family followed a classic pattern of immigrant commerce, family capital and long-term compounding.

The group’s official history states that Motibhai Becharbhai Patel travelled from Bombay to Fiji in 1929 at the age of 24. He initially worked for a merchant in Ba before striking out independently and opening a small grocery store in Kumkum, on the outskirts of Ba, in 1931.

The group was not ultimately built by Motibhai alone. Its three recognized founders are Motibhai Becharbhai Patel, Prabhudas Becharbhai Patel and Parshottamdas Becharbhai Patel.

Mahendra Patel recalled in a 2002 interview that his father worked for roughly two years after arriving in Fiji, earning around £30 a year, and that the early Kumkum business operated under very poor transport conditions, with supplies linked to the railway infrastructure of the sugar industry. He described the early group as growing primarily through profits, savings and family capital rather than outside investment.

That background helps explain the later Motibhai culture: family control, long time horizons, reluctance to abandon Fiji during crises, and the recycling of cash generated in one sector into another sector.

Mahendra “Mac” Motibhai Patel is the key figure for understanding the modern group and the acquisition of The Fiji Times.

Motibhai celebrated Mahendra’s 70th birthday on August 5, 2010, implying a birth date of August 5, 1940. He is the son of founder Motibhai Becharbhai Patel.

Public information on Mahendra’s formal higher education is much thinner than for Kirit Patel. A 2003 profile described a modest childhood in which he walked significant distances to school and studied by lamplight, later educating himself extensively through reading, travel and business practice. Exact schools and a complete formal academic record are publicly limited / cannot presently be confirmed.

Mahendra’s major strength was not a single professional specialization but transforming a traditional trading concern into a system integrating wholesale distribution, international brand agencies, airport duty-free retail, manufacturing, real estate and institutional relationships. By 2002, he described the group as operating property businesses, Sprint soft-drink manufacturing, Prouds luxury retail, airport duty-free operations and extensive international-brand distribution.

A second source of Mahendra’s influence was his extensive network outside the family company.

Travel-retail industry sources document his long involvement in Fiji’s tourism sector. In 2005 he received the Fiji Tourism Excellence Awards Lifetime Achiever Award, described at the time as the country’s highest individual recognition for sustained contribution to tourism.

Public reporting has also listed leadership or board roles involving the Fiji Electricity Authority, Fiji Visitors Bureau, Air Pacific and Reserve Bank of Fiji. He received a CBE in 1984 and was awarded France’s Officer de l’Ordre National du Mérite in 1990.

Mahendra therefore occupied an unusually central position in a small national economy: private business, tourism, airports, public bodies, government relationships and international brand networks intersected around him.

That helps explain why Motibhai was a realistic local buyer when News Limited was forced to divest The Fiji Times in 2010. The group had capital and operating capability, while Mahendra himself had previously served as a non-executive director of The Fiji Times.

Current leader Kirit Prabhudas Patel represents a different succession model: overseas professional training followed by a return to the family company.

Kirit was born and raised in Ba. His father, Prabhudas Patel, was one of Motibhai Group’s three founders; his mother was Dahiben Patel. Kirit has described his father as his principal mentor and “guru” and has repeatedly emphasized the role of the wider family in shaping his management philosophy.

He earned a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of New South Wales and did not immediately enter the family business. He first spent four years in Sydney at Coopers & Lybrand, later part of PwC, handling audits and professional services for large Australian companies.

Kirit joined Motibhai in 1980. In 2017 he identified the introduction of new products and brands, together with diversification and restructuring, as major contributions of his career. He said the group then employed around 1,300 people; that is a 2017 figure, not a verified 2026 employee count.

As of 2026, Motibhai’s official website continues to identify Kirit Patel as Group Chairman & CEO.

Motibhai should not be understood as a media group that bought a newspaper. It is a consumer, retail, manufacturing and property conglomerate that added a media asset.

The group’s currently disclosed businesses include Motibhai & Company Ltd in FMCG, import/export and wholesale distribution; Stinson Pearce / Prouds in luxury and travel retail; Waqavuka Development Company, operating Prouds and Jewellery Galleria duty-free shops at Nadi International Airport; Fiji Foods, producing edible oils, Golden margarine and other food products; PET Technology, making PET packaging and Sprint carbonated drinks; Victus / Burger King Fiji; and Fiji Times Limited.

In property, Motibhai partnered with what is now Bank of South Pacific/BSP in developing Suva Central, combining retail, offices, parking and serviced-apartment functions.

Regionally, Prouds has expanded into Papua New Guinea through a partnership with CPL Group, including airport duty-free and domestic retail outlets.

The portfolio can therefore be interpreted in two categories.

The first consists of direct cash-flow assets: stores, airport concessions, factories, distribution networks, property and restaurants.

The second consists of influence assets, of which The Fiji Times is the clearest example. It is certainly a commercial operation, but its value cannot be measured only by newspaper profit because it also connects politics, public debate, government, corporate advertisers and civil society. This is an analytical inference from the ownership structure and the newspaper’s public role; it is not evidence that Motibhai directs editorial coverage.

Motibhai’s capital model is closer to family capital, banking relationships and long-term partnerships than to private equity or venture capital.

Industry accounts consistently describe it as an independent family business. Mahendra explicitly said in 2002 that the company was not then publicly listed. Current official materials continue to present it as a family-led group and do not identify a private-equity or venture-capital controller. Exact ownership percentages among family members, group valuation and consolidated financial figures are publicly limited / cannot presently be confirmed.

In Mahendra’s own account, an important financing transition occurred around the 1960s. Earlier, local firms had limited access to credit and relied heavily on accumulated profits and savings. He credited the arrival of Bank of Baroda and more flexible overdraft facilities with materially improving the ability of companies such as Motibhai to expand.

Later growth increasingly depended on partnership capital: Colonial/BSP for Suva Central, CPL in Papua New Guinea, airport-concession relationships and long-standing agency and distribution ties with international consumer and luxury brands.

For a small island economy such as Fiji, this structure is logical. A single vertical market offers limited scale, so growth can come from controlling imports, distribution, retail, property gateways and customer relationships, then replicating those capabilities across categories. Motibhai’s history largely follows that pattern.

Acquisition, Business Model, Turning Points, Controversies and Current Influence

The 2010 acquisition of The Fiji Times was not a normal media M&A transaction; regulatory intervention directly created the ownership transition.

Following the 2006 coup, relations between the Frank Bainimarama government and the media became increasingly confrontational. The Media Industry Development Decree of 2010 required media-company directors to satisfy Fijian citizenship and permanent-residency requirements and required at least 90% local ownership.

This directly affected The Fiji Times, which was controlled by Australia’s News Limited. News Limited was effectively compelled to sell and publicly described itself as a reluctant seller. The purchase price was not disclosed. Motibhai & Company became the buyer, and the transaction closed on September 22, 2010.

Two structural shifts therefore occurred simultaneously:

Murdoch-linked multinational media capital exited, while a locally embedded Fijian family conglomerate entered the centre of newspaper ownership.

Motibhai did not simply outbid News Corp in an ordinary strategic auction; it obtained the asset during a regulatory window in which foreign ownership was being forced out.

Mahendra’s public framing of the acquisition was unusual because he explicitly presented it as more than a commercial investment.

At the time of purchase, Mahendra promised that The Fiji Times would operate as an independent unit inside Motibhai and that its long history would be respected.

After the handover he told employees that the decision had not been made “purely for commercial reasons” but also represented a socio-economic commitment to Fiji, while promising continuity and job security.

Such statements do not prove the absence of owner influence. They do, however, show that Motibhai understood a fundamental media-economics reality: the principal value of The Fiji Times depends on public credibility; reducing it to a corporate publicity vehicle would destroy much of the asset’s value.

The fact that the newspaper subsequently continued to face serious legal and political clashes with the government also indicates that it did not simply become a compliant pro-government outlet after local ownership.

Motibhai’s overall business model evolved in a clear direction: from trader to controller of more stages of the value chain.

The sequence runs from small-scale retail in 1931, supermarkets and property in the 1960s, travel retail in 1971, food manufacturing and Prouds luxury retail in the 1980s, greater emphasis on proprietary products and packaging thereafter, major property development in the 2000s, media in 2010, and the Burger King Fiji master franchise from 2014–2015, followed by further food-service and regional retail expansion.

There is a minor discrepancy over the Fiji Foods acquisition: Mahendra said in a 2002 interview that it occurred in 1981, while the group’s current official history gives 1982. The safest formulation is therefore around 1981–1982. Sources differ.

Prouds also requires careful chronology. Motibhai entered Nadi Airport duty-free in 1971; it later acquired Prouds stores in the mid-1980s, and its airport operation was further unified under the Prouds identity in 1996. 1971 is therefore the origin of the duty-free business, not necessarily the fully developed Prouds structure recognizable today.

The underlying logic is:

import agency → wholesale distribution → retail → manufacturing → real estate → food service → media.

Each extension allowed Motibhai to capture a larger portion of the value chain and more consumer touchpoints.

The Fiji Times itself combines conventional newspaper economics, digital publishing and exceptional historical brand value.

Motibhai’s current official materials state that Fiji Times Limited continues to publish print and online editions seven days a week.

The precise revenue mix among print circulation, advertising, subscriptions, digital subscriptions and other activities is publicly limited / cannot presently be confirmed, because Fiji Times Limited is not a listed media company publishing detailed segment profitability.

What is clearly scarce is the brand equity accumulated over more than a century and a half: readership habit, historical archives, institutional recognition and political relevance. Amnesty International in 2017 described The Fiji Times as one of the country’s important remaining independent media voices, while CPJ repeatedly framed legal cases involving the paper within the broader issue of Fiji press freedom.

The Fiji Times therefore performs a different role for Motibhai than Burger King, Sprint or Prouds. Those businesses primarily produce consumer cash flow; the newspaper also produces agenda-setting capacity and institutional reputation.

The group’s major turning points can be reduced to a coherent timeline.

1929: Motibhai Becharbhai Patel migrates from Bombay to Fiji.

1931: the three Patel brothers establish the commercial foundation of Motibhai around a small Kumkum grocery store.

1960s: expansion into supermarkets and property in Ba, alongside improving access to bank credit.

1971: entry into travel retail and duty-free at Nadi Airport.

Around 1981–1982: acquisition of Fiji Foods and entry into food manufacturing.

Mid-1980s: expansion of the Prouds luxury-retail platform.

Around 1999: Sprint becomes an important locally owned beverage brand, later manufactured through PET Technology; it remains one of Motibhai’s core brands today.

Around 2002: the Colonial/BSP partnership develops Suva Central, moving Motibhai’s property capabilities toward large-scale urban commercial development.

September 22, 2010: acquisition of The Fiji Times.

2014–2015: Motibhai becomes Burger King’s Fiji master franchisee and begins operations in 2015.

From 2015: Prouds expands into Papua New Guinea in partnership with CPL Group.

2024: Motibhai wins the Executive of the Year award for Kirit Patel, the Premier Large Business Operating Internationally award and the Supreme Award at Fiji’s Prime Minister’s International Business Awards. Investment Fiji also reports plans for approximately FJ$10 million in a new northern warehouse and additional Burger King and Prouds expansion.

The family’s most impressive achievement is not any one business but the creation of cross-cycle family capital in a very small island economy.

Mahendra said the group employed more than 650 people in 2002; later industry sources documented continued expansion; by 2017 Kirit reported a workforce of around 1,300. These figures refer to different periods and should not be treated as a current 2026 headcount.

Its resilience is more significant. Mahendra said the group continued investing after Fiji’s 1987 and 2000 political crises rather than leaving. Political instability again damaged tourism and duty-free activity in 2006. Kirit later recalled that a very large share of Fiji’s traditional town-based duty-free operators disappeared, while Motibhai responded by diversifying further.

Motibhai’s core capability is therefore not simply being exceptionally good at selling one product.

When tourism weakens, it still has FMCG. When retail struggles, it has property. Beyond imported products it has manufacturing. Beyond Fiji it has PNG. Beyond consumer businesses it has media.

That is the classic risk-distribution logic of a diversified family conglomerate.

The Fiji Times’ greatest achievement is preserving a reputation for an independent public voice despite repeated changes of ownership.

That does not mean it has escaped criticism. Political actors have repeatedly accused it of bias. Frank Bainimarama publicly criticized its journalism as biased or unprofessional, while editor-in-chief Fred Wesley rejected that accusation and said the newspaper sought fair and impartial reporting.

More revealing is the extent of government pressure it faced.

In 2012, Fiji Times Limited and Fred Wesley were found in contempt of court after republishing material critical of Fiji’s judiciary. Amnesty International later recorded a substantial fine against the company and a suspended sentence for Wesley.

In 2016, the newspaper’s iTaukei-language publication Nai Lalakai published a controversial reader letter concerning Muslims. Fiji Times Limited, publishing executives, editors and the writer subsequently faced sedition-related charges. Amnesty International described the prosecution as politically motivated intimidation of the newspaper.

On May 22, 2018, the Fiji High Court acquitted the defendants. The International Federation of Journalists described the outcome as a victory for press freedom in Fiji and the Pacific.

The episode demonstrates that local Motibhai ownership did not eliminate The Fiji Times’ conflict with state power.

The newspaper and members of the Patel family also directly faced legal scrutiny under the Media Decree’s ownership rules.

In 2013, Fiji’s Director of Public Prosecutions filed charges against Fiji Times Limited and six directors—Mahendra Patel, Kiritbhai Patel, Rajesh Patel, Manu Patel, Bhupendra Patel and Jinesh Patel—alleging that during 2012 the company had failed to ensure that all directors met Fijian citizenship and permanent-residency requirements.

This is significant because it shows that the 2010 localization regime did not end once the newspaper had been sold; it continued to regulate the citizenship and residency status of company directors.

The ultimate judicial disposition of this specific 2013 directors’ case is publicly limited / cannot presently be confirmed from the available reliable materials. The filing of charges therefore must not be represented as a conviction.

Mahendra Patel’s most serious personal controversies arose from Post Fiji, not The Fiji Times. That distinction is essential.

One widely reported case concerned Mahendra’s conduct while chairman of Post Fiji, involving a transaction in which an external Seiko clock costing about FJ$75,000 was purchased from the Patel-linked Prouds operation. Prosecutors alleged procedural and conflict-of-interest failures. Mahendra was ultimately convicted of abuse of office and sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment; reporting on the case noted that three assessors had favoured acquittal before the judge reached a guilty verdict.

A second case concerned the extension of then-Post Fiji managing director Tevita Peni Mau’s contract without full board approval. Mahendra was convicted in absentia in November 2014 and sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment.

He later obtained leave to appeal but in 2019 instructed his lawyers to withdraw the appeal, citing mounting legal costs. The Fiji Court of Appeal subsequently approved the withdrawal.

In 2024, Fiji’s Mercy Commission stated officially that an initial mercy petition filed by Mahendra in 2023 had been rejected. After reconsideration in 2024, the Commission took into account his age, lengthy absence from Fiji and contribution to the country and recommended a conditional pardon, contingent on his not reoffending.

These cases concerned Mahendra’s conduct in a Post Fiji public-board role, not corruption in The Fiji Times’ journalism or editorial operations. They are nevertheless material when assessing the controlling family’s reputation, government relationships and corporate-governance record.

Mahendra’s history reveals the two-sided nature of the Motibhai model: relationships are both an asset and a governance risk.

On the positive side, decades of participation in public institutions, airports, tourism, finance and government-linked organizations created trust, policy knowledge and commercial access. Motibhai’s airport duty-free positions, international brand agencies, large property partnerships and eventual acquisition of The Fiji Times all emerged from an unusually deep level of local institutional embeddedness.

From a governance perspective, however, situations in which the same individual simultaneously occupies positions in a family supplier, a public enterprise board and government-related bodies inherently raise questions of related-party transactions, conflicts of interest and independent decision-making. The Post Fiji case represented a serious realization of precisely that risk.

The same characteristic therefore sits at the centre of both Motibhai’s competitive advantage and its principal governance vulnerability:

an exceptionally dense network of family, commercial, institutional and political relationships.

The political environment surrounding The Fiji Times changed structurally after 2023.

Fiji’s Parliament passed the Media Industry Development (Repeal) Act on April 6, 2023, repealing the regulatory system created in 2010; parliamentary records show that the repeal came into force on April 14.

Reporters Without Borders regards the repeal as a major improvement in Fiji’s media environment. Its 2026 country profile places Fiji 24th out of 180 countries and territories and states that pressure from civilian and military authorities eased markedly after Sitiveni Rabuka replaced Bainimarama in 2022, with the abolition of MIDA representing an important turning point.

The Fiji Times therefore operates today in almost the inverse institutional environment from the one in which Motibhai acquired it:

in 2010 it changed hands amid compulsory localization of ownership and severe media controls; in 2026 it remains owned by the same domestic family group, but the national press-freedom environment has become substantially more liberal.

As of 2026, The Fiji Times still occupies an unusually important position.

Motibhai continues to list Fiji Times Limited as a core group company, publishing print and online editions every day.

Public information in 2026 continues to identify Fred Wesley as Editor-in-Chief, and the Pacific Islands News Association lists The Fiji Times among its media members with Wesley as a principal editorial contact.

At group level, Kirit Patel remains Chairman & CEO. Following Motibhai’s multiple wins at the 2024 Prime Minister’s International Business Awards, the group also disclosed further warehouse, Prouds and Burger King investment plans.

The current structure can therefore be summarized as follows:

Kirit Patel = operating centre of the conglomerate; the wider Motibhai/Patel family = long-term ownership and capital network; Fiji Times Limited = a media asset with unusually strong independent public-brand value; Fred Wesley and the editorial organization = the professional news-production system.

The clearest way to understand the whole story is that Motibhai did not build its fortune through media; it first accumulated capital through real-economy businesses and later used that capital to acquire an exceptionally scarce national opinion and information asset.

George Griffiths created a nineteenth-century information-infrastructure brand. The three Patel brothers created a twentieth-century family commercial infrastructure. Mahendra brought those previously unrelated histories together in 2010. Kirit subsequently became responsible for continuing the institutionalization, diversification and regional expansion of the wider family group.

There is no public financial evidence showing that The Fiji Times generates more profit for Motibhai than its retail, distribution, property or manufacturing businesses. Its deeper strategic value lies elsewhere:

historical legitimacy, public visibility, political relevance, agenda-setting power and a daily connection to Fijian society that no ordinary consumer brand can replicate.

At the same time, this ownership structure creates an inherent governance question. A family conglomerate spanning imports, distribution, retail, property, tourism, airport commerce, food service, manufacturing and extensive institutional relationships also owns a major newspaper. Such a structure requires particularly strong editorial independence and conflict-of-interest safeguards. The available public record does not establish systematic direct interference by Motibhai in Fiji Times journalism; indeed, the newspaper continued to face prosecution and political hostility during the Motibhai era. The more precise conclusion is therefore not simply that “a family controls the media,” but that a family conglomerate deeply embedded in Fiji’s economic power structure owns a nationally significant newspaper that has continued to assert an independent journalistic tradition.