Mission & Justice

25/9/08

Papua New Guinea is the least transparent country in the Pacific says watchdog group, Transparency International. The yearly list measures the perceived levels of public-sector corruption in a given country and draws on different expert and business surveys. On a scale from one to 10, Papua New Guinea scored two, placing it equal 151st overall. The country is internationally ranked among the 30 most corrupt countries in the world with no real indications of improvement in government, Trans-parency International’s 2008 Corruption Index launched in Port Moresby yesterday announced.

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23/9/08

Records of K100 million in public funds allocated to the National Forest Authority have gone missing according to the Auditor General’s office, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) hearing found yesterday. There are no records kept of K100 million in the period 1999-2005, First Secretary to the Auditor General Andy Vui told the PAC hearing which began at Parliament yesterday. “No records, or sufficient accounts and documents were provided by the PNGFA to enable us to carry out an audit from 1999-2005,” Mr Vui said. PAC chairman Timothy Bonga grilled the NFA for not being able to manage its own budgets. “If the authority cannot manage its own internal budgets and cannot keep even basic accounting records, how can it be expected to manage our forests?” he asked. “There appears to be no oversight control, coercion or assistance to the authority by the Finance Department.” HE blasted Secretary for Finance Mr Gabriel Yer for his silence and inaction despite warnings from the Auditor General.

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Greg Roberts; 20/8/08

Papua New Guinea’s anti-corruption watchdog is investigating the alleged payment of millions of dollars in bribes from the logging industry to ministers in the Government of Prime Minister Michael Somare. PNG government sources said yesterday the Ombudsman Commission of PNG was examining the Singapore bank accounts of two ministers. It would investigate suggestions that some payments were channelled through the Cairns branch of an Australian bank. Media reports in PNG claimed there was a money trail of corrupt payments from Singapore through Australia to Port Moresby, with $US27million ($31 million) being withdrawn from one account around the time of last year’s PNG national elections.

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Leonie Wood; 31/7/08

The oil-for-food taskforce has told a former senior AWB executive, Charles Stott, that he may face criminal charges over his role in the wheat exporter’s $300 million Iraqi kickbacks scandal. Mr Stott, who headed AWB’s international sales and marketing operations from 2001 until 2006, learnt about the likelihood of criminal charges during a meeting with the taskforce on July 14. The taskforce’s leader, Commander Peter Donaldson, and Superintendent Lester Cross of the Australian Federal Police told Mr Stott’s lawyers that they plan to hand a brief recommending criminal charges to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions within months. Mr Stott was one of 12 people, including 11 former AWB senior managers, who were cited for further investigation by the Cole inquiry’s commissioner, Terence Cole, QC, who found the 12 may have breached criminal laws when they engineered secret payments to a tracking company associated with the corrupt Saddam Hussein regime between 1999 and 2004.

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Milanda Rout; 29/7/08

Lawyers for six former executives and directors of wheat exporter AWB say the men should not face civil action brought against them by the corporate watchdog until any possible criminal proceedings have been concluded. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission alleges the six defendants - including former chairman Trevor Flugge and former managing director Andrew Lindberg - breached the Corporations Act through their involvement in the $300 million Iraqi kickbacks scandal. But the Victorian Supreme Court was yesterday told the former executives should not have to answer to those allegations until any possible criminal charges have been laid because they may risk incriminating themselves in the civil proceedings. The men face millions of dollars’ worth of fines and a ban from managing corporations if ASIC can prove they either knew or should have known about the kickbacks made to Saddam Hussein’s regime to secure wheat export contracts from 1999.

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James Glanz; 24/5/08

A Pentagon audit of US Army payments to contractors in Iraq has found that almost none followed federal rules and that, in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received. The audit of $US8.2 billion ($A8.5 billion) in American taxpayers’ money also found a sometimes stunning lack of accountability in the way the military spent about $US1.8 billion in seized or frozen Iraqi assets, which in the early phases of the Iraq war were often doled out in stacks or pallets of cash. The audit was released this week along with a congressional hearing on the payments.

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30/4/08

A second US military aircraft carrier has been placed in the Gulf as a “reminder” of the country’s power in the region. Robert Gates, the US secretary of state, made the comments on a trip to Mexico City on Tuesday, but added that the addition was temporary. He said that the move was not an escalation of US forces in the region or a precursor to military action against Iran. “This deployment has been planned for a long time,” he said. I don’t think we’ll have two carriers there for a protracted period of time. So I don’t see it as an escalation. “I think it could be seen, though, as a reminder.”

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Greg Roberts; 23/4/08

Papua New Guinea has admitted its forestry sector is riddled with corruption as a high-powered delegation of Australian frontbenchers arrives in the country for talks that will focus on deforestation. Nine Rudd government ministers and parliamentary secretaries will front the first PNG-Australia Ministerial Forum since 2005, in Madang, PNG’s second city, with the new forest carbon partnership between the two nations the main topic for discussion. The parties are expected to reach an agreement to protect the Kokoda Track at today’s forum in what will be billed as recognition of the sacrifices made by Australian Diggers during World War II in PNG in the lead-up to Anzac Day. In the first admission of its kind by a PNG Government, the country’s new Forest Minister, Belden Namah, has told the PNG parliament in Port Moresby that logging companies routinely flout laws with the help of corrupt officials.

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