Mission & Justice

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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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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