Romani Katoa, a member of the World Aquatics Bureau and Vice President of Oceania Aquatics, is going through costs within the Prepare dinner Islands after allegedly being seen on CCTV footage breaking right into a property at 2AM on Boxing Day, 2024.
Katoa, the primary Pacific Islander to carry Oceania’s lone seat on the World Aquatics Bureau, is going through a cost of willful harm after Prepare dinner Islands businesswoman Natasha Wright shared video on social media of two people getting into a property she owns armed with knives, in response to Prepare dinner Island Information.
He’s being charged alongside a 28-year-old co-defendant, fisherman Poe Poila, who has been charged with driving drunk at greater than 3 times the authorized restrict and crashing his automotive.
Each males have been launched on bail.
Wright contacted Prepare dinner Island Information with considerations that no motion had been taken by police after two weeks regardless of saying that she knew who the people have been.
Police say that Katoa was arrested and located with the knife that was allegedly used within the incident, including that “additional costs are more likely to come up from these associated incidents.”
Among the many fast fallout was the resignation of Katoa because the performing president of the Prepare dinner Islands Sports activities and Nationwide Olympic Committee. Simiona Teiotu has changed him in that position on an interim foundation and mentioned that Romani “volunteered to step down” from his earlier position of senior vice-president.
Katoa continues to be listed as a member of the World Aquatics Bureau and Vice-President of Oceania Aquatics (previously the Oceania Swimming Affiliation). SwimSwam has reached out to World Aquatics about his standing with the group however has not but heard again.
Different fallout is that Katoa’s contract as challenge supervisor with the Prepare dinner Islands Funding Company (CIIC) for a Arutanga Harbour challenge has been terminated. The challenge includes dredging the harbor entry to accommodate extra ships, yachts, and cruise ship tenders. CIIC is a state-owned firm that manages’ the Prepare dinner Islands’ authorities property.
This isn’t Katoa’s first authorized challenge in recent times. In 2022, he pleaded responsible to costs of assault and carrying offensive weapons after an August 2020 incident.
He approached a gaggle of younger folks at 2:30 AM who have been ingesting, smoking marijuana, and being disorderly with a shovel and a machete. Based on CookIslandsNews, he “banged the machete’s flat aspect in opposition to the buttocks of three ladies.”
Prices have been finally dropped after he donated $1,500 NZD ($860 USD) to the Prepare dinner Islands Girls’s Counselling Heart, which affords help to ladies who’ve been victims of violence. The choose took into consideration a clear report and his standing on the island in dismissing the costs in that 2020 incident.
The Prepare dinner Islands are a gaggle of 15 main islands unfold out throughout 850,000 miles of ocean within the South Pacific, about 2,000 miles northeast of New Zealand. They’ve a mixed inhabitants of about 15,000 folks as of the 2021 census and have been competing within the Summer time Olympic Video games since 1988. They despatched their smallest delegation ever (tied) in 2024 of two athletes: Alex Beddoes, who was entered within the males’s 800 run on the observe however scratched; and Lanihei Connolly, who completed thirty second within the ladies’s 100 breaststroke in 1:10.45.
Connolly was raised in New Zealand and received gold within the 50 breaststroke and silver within the 100 breaststroke on the 2023 Pacific Video games. Swimmers have represented the nation on the Olympics in every version courting again to 2008.
World Aquatics has not responded to a request for remark.
