A member of New Caledonia's congress, Eymard Bouanaoue, has died in Australia of a heart attack at the age of 50.
Mr Bouanaoue was a founding member of the FCCI group and the president of the permanent commission of the congress.
The French news agency, AFP, says he had been flown to a hospital in Sydney at the beginning of August - three days after he was found badly injured near his car which caught fire in yet unidentified circumstances.
