World Rugby is closely monitoring the situation involving the Fiji Rugby Union.

Last night, the former FRU deputy board chairman, Daniel Whippy, told SUNsports that there has been some correspondence with World Rugby.

“This is regarding the issues that FRU currently faces, but I am not party to those conversations,” he said.

“We are out of FRU and we have no comments on that. I cannot comment too on the repercussions of all that’s happening with our relationship with World Rugby.”

When contacted, Cathy Wong, who is Fiji’s representative to the World Rugby Council, did not wish to comment on the issue.

A former FRU senior executive who did not want to be named too said this was a serious matter, which could have severe repercussions on the sport since World Rugby has a zero tolerance on political or government interference.

The executive said World Rugby, an international sporting federation is under the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The roe charter does not accommodate government or political interference in the running of an international sporting federation.

Attorney-General Siromi Turaga, in a statement, indicated that following his meeting with the FRU board of directors, last Wednesday, he had asked them to resign voluntarily.

Turaga said using powers vested in him by the Charitable Trust Act, he, as the Minister for Justice, will now move to protect the assets and operations of the FRU, appoint interim Trustees of the FRU to take it forward to a Special General Meeting, appoint an interim administrator to act on behalf of interim trustees.

The Attorney-General was supposed to announce his interim administrator and trustees yesterday.

This has yet to happen. Several attempts to get a comment from Turaga at the weekend were unsuccessful.

Whether that will go well with World Rugby is yet to be known.

On a worst scenario, the executive said Government needs to move fast to appoint independent people to resolve the current situation. Failing to do that could result in the:

■ Withdrawal of funding, which will cripple all the operations at Rugby House

■ Suspension of Fiji from World Rugby (losing its seat in the council)

■ Revoking of the Fijian Drua’s Super Rugby Pacific licence

■ Flying Fijians to be banned from this year’s Rugby World Cup in France.

■ Fijian men’s and women’s sevens teams out of the HSBC World Sevens Series and next year’s Olympic Games in Paris, France.

Feedback: inoke.rabonu@fijisun.com.fj