Former Fiji prime minister Mahendra Pal Chaudhry has been charged with a dozen crimes relating to money laundering and tax evasion.
Chaudhry, who was held hostage for 56 days before being deposed as Fiji's leader in a nationalist coup in 2000, appeared in court on Friday charged with 12 offences, Fiji police spokeswoman Ema Mua told AAP.
It is alleged he held up to $A400,000 in a Commonwealth Bank of Australia account and $A50,000 was given to his daughter in Australia without procedures being followed, Agence France-Presse reported.
The 12 charges, which date back to just after the 2000 coup, include providing false information to the Fiji Islands Revenue and Customs Authority, AFP said.
Chaudhry appeared in Suva Magistrate's Court on Friday afternoon and was represented by his son, lawyer Rajendra Chaudhry, news website Fijivillage reported.
He heard the charges but was not required to enter a plea, Fijivillage said.
He was released on bail and will reappear in court next week.
"He's out on bail and he's got bail condition and he's to appear in the High Court next month," Ms Mua told AAP, later correcting the next court date to July 30.
"He's to surrender his travel documents, passport, and he's to report in to the nearest police post to his home every Thursday," she said.
Chaudhry was briefly finance minister in the current military-led government of Frank Bainimarama, during which time an independent audit cleared him of any wrongdoing in relation to his overseas financial dealings.
He was Fiji's first ethnic Indian leader when he was elected prime minister in 1999 and was overthrown a year later in a coup led by nationalist George Speight.
On May 19, 2000, failed businessman Speight led a group of special force soldiers into Fiji's parliament, where he seized Chaudhry and his government, holding them hostage for 56 days.
During the hostage period, the Fiji Military Forces took power, declared martial law and installed an interim prime minister, Laisenia Qarase, who a year later won the post in a democratic election.
Speight and co-conspirators, Timoci Silatolu and Josefa Nata, were convicted of treason and jailed for life.
Chaudhry was the leader of the Fiji Labour Party until 2008 and controversially backed Commodore Bainimarama's 2006 bloodless coup, in which the military leader seized power from Mr Qarase's government.
Australia has been one of the harshest critics of Fiji since Commodore Bainimarama led the coup and stalled democratic elections, which were initially promised for 2009 and have now been pushed back to 2014.
Already-frosty relations between the two nations heightened this week when Australia and Fiji became embroiled in a bitter spat over whether a meeting of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) should proceed in Fiji.
Fiji believed the meeting would lend some credibility to its regime, while Australia thought the meeting would undermine efforts to pressure Fiji to return to democracy.
The meeting went ahead - under the new name of Engaging Fiji - and Australia and New Zealand were the only nations in the region to decline an invitation to attend.
At the conclusion of the two-day meeting on Friday, Fiji government spokeswoman Sharon Smith Johns said the officials from 10 nations - including Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and the Solomons Islands - had held unified discussions about climate change and the economy.
There were plans to regroup annually for updates on Fiji's progress towards democracy and elections in 2014, she said.
