Posts Tagged ‘Corruption’
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
Rowan Callick; 28/4/10
A cabal of top public servants and lawyers have hijacked Papua New Guinea’s government chequebook, plundering more than $300 million through sham compensation claims. The rorts include Finance Secretary Gabriel Yer initiating a spurious claim of $700,000 for himself and 225 people from his home village. He delivered the money to a dozen of them whom he had flown to Port Moresby, in a case containing 50-kina notes. A devastating judicial report detailing the conspiracy, commissioned and tabled in parliament by Prime Minister Michael Somare last month, shows the collapse of PNG’s control over its finances.
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Tags: Corruption, PNG, Trade
Posted in Aid / Trade, Human Rights, PNG / West Papua | No Comments »
Saturday, December 26th, 2009
Rowan Callick, 26/12/09
A fortnight ago, Papua New Guinea’s top corruption fighter, Chief Ombudsman Chronox Manek, arrived home in his Nissan Patrol from a function at about 10.30pm, and stopped in front of the gate to the Port Moresby house. Two cars, which had followed him, suddenly turned off the road and hemmed his vehicle in. He rammed one of the other cars, but three men leaped from the second, and began shooting at him. A bullet went through his shoulder, and he slumped forward. He had hit his car horn to alert his family, and the attackers drove off. Manek said they had left him for dead. It was a miracle he survived, he said. Despite being dizzy from loss of blood, he drove to hospital. He returned to work this week. But neither the police nor the Ombudsman Commission are saying where the investigation is heading, beyond Police Commissioner Gari Baki’s routine pronouncement: “We are determined to get to the bottom of this.”
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Tags: Corruption, PNG, Trade
Posted in Aid / Trade, Human Rights, PNG / West Papua | No Comments »
Saturday, July 25th, 2009
Natasha Mozgovaya; 25/7/09
A few years ago, Solomon Dwek was the black sheep of the New Jersey Jewish community where his father Yitzhak was a prominent rabbi. After a string of failed real estate ventures and charges of bank fraud, Dwek’s career appeared all but over. But the rabbi’s son found his true calling as an FBI informant, where he is now achieving stardom after helping bring indictments against 44 defendants, including a number of prominent rabbis, four ex-mayors and a former senator, in one of the largest money-laundering and corruption investigations seen in the U.S. in years. Among the big fish scooped up in the arrest is the new mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey Peter Cammarano, who along with a number of local civic leaders met with Dwek for lunch this past April, where the failed real-estate man implored them to help “expedite” his business ventures
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Tags: Corruption, Israel, USA
Posted in Aid / Trade, Health & Children, Human Rights, Israel & Palestine, USA | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009
6/5/09
Billings from KBR, the US Army’s largest contractor in Iraq, constitute the vast majority of 32 cases referred for criminal investigation, the Pentagon’s top auditor has revealed. April Stephenson, head of the Pentagon’s contract audit agency, told the Wartime Contracting Commission: “I don’t think we are aware of a program, a contract or a contractor that’s had this number” of referrals. KBR, then a unit of Halliburton, won a contract in 2001 for housing, food, laundry and fuel services to US troops. The contract’s value grew to $US31.7 billion ($A42.9 billion), with most of the work in Iraq and Kuwait.
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Tags: Corruption, Iraq, Kuwait, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Aid / Trade, Asia, USA | No Comments »
Friday, March 13th, 2009
1/3/09
Bernard Madoff, a former US financier, has pleaded guilty to 11 charges relating to an alleged $50bn fraud on Wall Street, and can face the rest of his life in jail. The charges brought against him on Thursday included fraud, perjury and theft from an employee benefit plan, as well as two counts of international money-laundering. Prosecutors say the former chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange could be given up to 150 years in prison.
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Tags: Corruption, Global, USA
Posted in Aid / Trade, USA | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
Adel Safty; 24/2/09
Earlier this month, the Commission on Wartime Contracting presented to the US Congress a document prepared by the US Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction entitled Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience. It is a story of incompetence, nepotism, failures and cover up. And of fraud and corruption, and not only by Iraqi officials and American contractors. Last week the New York Times reported that senior American officers involved in the Iraq reconstruction project were being investigated for fraud and corruption.
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Tags: Corruption, Iraq, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Aid / Trade, Human Rights, Iraq, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Monday, February 16th, 2009
15/2/09; (3 Items)
The US military announced on Saturday it has struck deals with Iraq that will see Baghdad spend $5 billion on American-made weapons, equipment and training. The money is being spent on “military equipment, supplies and training from the US” through a foreign military sales programme, it said in a statement released in Baghdad. The announcement was made following a meeting between Iraqi security officials and the US Defence Security Cooperation Agency, which reviews military sales between the two countries. Approximately 20 members of the Iraqi defence ministry as well as officials from the interior ministry took part in the financial review, the statement said.
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Tags: Arms, Corruption, Iraq, Nuclear, Trade, USA
Posted in Aid / Trade, Arms, Human Rights, Iraq, USA | No Comments »
Friday, February 6th, 2009
Rose Marie Berger; 6/2/09
Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen has been on the Hill this week going through the gory details of waste, fraud, and mismanagement of the roughly $51 billion we gave for the rebuilding of Iraq. “For anyone who has followed the issue,” reports Wired blog, the conclusions are not surprising. In advance interviews, Bowen estimated that around 15 percent — or $3 billion — of the $20 billion allocated for big-ticket reconstruction projects in Iraq had been wasted. In a draft copy of the report that was leaked last year, Bowen recalled seeing bags of dollar bills literally being hauled out of the Republican Palace, headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority. ‘What I saw was troubling: large amounts of cash moving quickly out the door,’ he wrote. ‘Later that same day, walking the halls of the palace, I overheard someone say: “We can’t do that anymore. There is a new inspector general here.”
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Tags: Corruption, Iraq, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Human Rights, Iraq, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Thursday, September 25th, 2008
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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Tags: Corruption, PNG
Posted in Aid / Trade, Asia, PNG / West Papua, Pacific Region | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
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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Tags: Corruption, Environment, PNG
Posted in Aid / Trade, Environment, Human Rights, PNG / West Papua | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008
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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Tags: Corruption, Environment, PNG
Posted in Aid / Trade, Environment, Human Rights, PNG / West Papua | No Comments »
Thursday, July 31st, 2008
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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Tags: Australia, Corruption, Terrorism
Posted in Aid / Trade, Australia, Human Rights, Iraq, Terrorism, USA, United Nations | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 29th, 2008
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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Tags: Australia, Corruption, Iraq, Trade, USA
Posted in Aid / Trade, Australia, Iraq, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Saturday, May 24th, 2008
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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Tags: Corruption, Iraq, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Aid / Trade, Iraq, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Friday, May 2nd, 2008
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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Tags: Cheney, Corruption, Halliburton, Iraq, Mercenaries, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Aid / Trade, Human Rights, Iraq, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
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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Tags: Corruption, Environment, Kokoda, PNG
Posted in Australia, Environment, Human Rights, PNG / West Papua, War | No Comments »
