PNGi INVESTIGATES
Payments to current and former public servants by logging company boss deserve further investigation
Documents lodged with a government regulator appear to show regular monthly payments made by a Malaysian businessman and logging company executive from his personal bank account to one current and two former senior public servants.
One of the public servants is currently employed by the PNG Forest Authority while the other two were formerly with the Customs Service.
Despite owning companies with a turnover of over K20 million a year, the payments were made by the businessman, Mee Tung Wong, from his personal bank account not a business account.
There is no evidence that any of the three public servants have abused their positions or necessarily done anything wrong, but the payments do raise a number of serious questions that deserve further investigation.
These questions include whether transactions between a participant in a high-risk industry and politically exposed persons, are being flagged, and subject to enhanced due diligence by commercial banks.
The Malaysian businessman
Over the past ten-years, forty-one-year-old Mee Tung Wong has been variously involved in a number of PNG registered companies both as owner and director.
Mee Tung Wong is a Malaysian national born in 1984.
These companies include a number of logging companies reported to be part of the Malaysian Giant Kingdom group which was the subject of an anti-money laundering risk alert report published in 2023.
Mr Wong is the sole shareholder and director for Quantum Trading Limited, a company whose principal place of business is in Angoram District in East Sepik Province.
Quantum was first registered in 2017. The shares in the company were initially held by Mee Tung Wong in his own name, but in 2020 ownership was transferred to the Malaysian registered QTL Holdings SDN BHD. QTL Holdings is also owned by Mr Wong. In 2023, the shares in Quantum Trading were transferred back into Mr Wong’s own name.
Quantum Trading’s audited Financial Statement for 2023 states its principal activity is wholesale of heavy-duty machinery, equipment and supplies. The company made a net profit after tax of K99,294 on a revenue of K18 million in 2023. In 2025, the company employed 32 non-PNG nationals who made up more than half the company’s total workforce of 58.
Mr Wong is also listed as the sole owner of GE Mart Limited which is a wholesale and retail company trading in motor vehicles and household goods. The company had a reported turnover of K3.3 million in 2024 and employs three non-citizens but no Papua New Guineans.
Mee Tung Wong’s fellow director in GE Mart is Dasmund Wei Ming Wong. Both men are strongly connected to a number of companies in the Giant Kingdom group, which has extensive logging operations in East and West Sepik. Many of these logging projects operate under controversial Forest Clearing Authority licences and companies in the group were, according to a Commission of Inquiry, involved in the SABL land grab scandal.
Since 2020, Mee Tung Wong and Dasmund Wei Ming Wong have been the only two directors on the board of Foyston Development Limited, a company wholly owned by Chiong Ming Ting, the founder of the Giant Kingdom group.
From 2017 to June 2023, Mee Tung Wong was also the director of another company owned by Chiong Ming Ting, GE Development Limited.
Mee Tung Wong has also been involved in the share ownership of companies in the GK group.
For five months in 2023, Mr Wong was listed as owning 50% of the shares in Global Elite Limited, the company in the Giant Kingdom group responsible for logging in the sizeable Wammy FCA concession in West Sepik Province as well as almost a dozen other logging projects. Mr Wong was also listed as a director of the company during this period.
Similarly, from June to November 2023, Mr Wong was listed as owner of 50% of the shares in Continental Alliance Limited and as a company director. Continental Alliance is another Giant Kingdom group logging company operating under FCA licences in the Sepik region. The other 50% of shares in Continental Alliance are listed as owned by Dasmund Wei Ming Wong.
Mee Tung Wong was also listed as the 50% owner and a director of Green Horizon Limited between June and November 2023. His fellow owner and director was Dasmund Wei Ming Wong. According to its Annual Returns, Green Horizon is operating the Wanibe Sanchi Integrated Agriculture FCA in East Sepik Province.
Similarly, Mee Tung Wong was 50% owner and director of Matrix Development Limited alongside Dasmund Wei Ming Wong from June to November 2023. Matrix Development lists its principal place of business as the Angoram Integrated Agriculture FCA, also in East Sepik.
There is well documented analysis that suggests many FCA licences are being used to facilitate illegal logging and detailed concerns have been published regarding the Wammy FCA in particular. In December 2022, the National Forest Board imposed a moratorium on new FCA licences and ordered an audit of all existing operations.
Mee Tung Wong was approached for comment on the findings in this report but did not provide a response.
The payments
Mee Tung Wong’s personal bank account statements for both April 2023 and June 2024 show payments of K1,000 and K500 being made to Miana Tau Mabone, Valentine Wekre and Wape Pundiap.
03/04/23 Miana Tau Mabone 1,000.00
03/04/23 Valentine Wekre 500.00
03/04/23 Wape Pundiap 1,000.00
27/04/23 Wape Pundiap 1,000.00
12/06/24 Miana Tau Mabone 1,000.00
12/06/24 Valentine Wekre 500.00
21/06/24 Wape Pundiap 1,000.00
All three men received payments in both April 2023 and June 2024, suggesting these may have been regular monthly payments that were also made in the months preceding, between and after the months covered by the statements.
Mr Wong’s bank statements also reveal sizeable and regular incoming deposits, K50,000 in April 2023 and two deposits of K15,000 in June 2024.
The recipients
Wape Pundiap in an image from his Facebook page
In a National Court decision [WS 83 OF 2019] dated March 2022, Wape Pundiap is listed as the PNG Forest Authority Area Manager Momase Region.
Back in 2016, Mr Pundiap was an enthusiastic promotor for The Billion Coin crypto-currency scam, publishing videos promising that the pyramid savings scheme would end the divide between the rich and poor.
Mr Pundiap was approached for comment on the findings in this report but did not provide a response.
Miana Tau Mabone is a graduate of the University of Papua New Guinea. He retired from the PNG Customs Service in 2020 after 26 years of service. His retirement came three years before the first recorded payment to him from Mee Tung Wong.
Before his retirement Mr Mabone was a Director of Border Management. In this role his responsibilities included all trade and travel across the Indonesian border including tax collection and immigration services.
Valentine Wekre is also a former employee of the PNG Customs Service. Social media posts indicate he may also have retired in 2020.
In 2014, Mr Wekre was arrested and charged for stealing. This followed a complaint to the Ombudsman Commission (OC) from villagers in Sissano about missing items, including two outboard motors, that had confiscated during a police raid.
Wasdok Nius, Ombudsman Commission, March/April 2024, page 5
Investigation by the OC police oversight team from the Momase Regional Office found that the outboard motors had been claimed from the police lockup by Mr Wekre with the intention of selling them. One of the motors, which was recovered by the OC team, had been purchased by a police officer, the other motor was not recovered. There is no record of what happened to the case after Mr Wakre and the police office first appeared before the District Court.
Attempts were made to contact both Mr Mabone and Mr Wekre for comment on the findings in this report but neither could be reached.
Kina Bank and the logging industry
In September 2022, community advocacy organisation ACT NOW published an article on PNG’s commercial banks response to a report it had published in 2021 in collaboration with the Jubilee Australia Research Centre, The Money Behind the Chainsaws.
That report detailed how, despite widespread environmental, legal and human rights concerns about the logging industry in PNG, the four commercial banks operating in the country were facilitating the resource grab by providing various banking services and loans to logging companies.
In the article ACT NOW struck a positive tone:
Papua New Guinea’s two largest banks – Bank of South Pacific (BSP) and Kina Bank – have recently taken positive steps towards ending their financing for destructive forest logging. Kina Bank has released a new policy that prohibits financing for commercial logging operations in primary tropical moist forests and taken steps to review their exposure to logging in general and close accounts.
However, said ACT NOW, this was not the end of the story, in particular, “the banks’ new published policies do not prevent them continuing to provide transaction accounts and other services to logging companies”.
Clearly, from the evidence presented above regarding Mr Wong’s bank statements from 2023 and 2024 and his company associations, while Kina Bank may, as it claimed, have taken steps to review its exposure to the logging industry and have closed some accounts in accordance with both its anti-money laundering and environmental and social risk management policies, those policies may not have led to the closure of the accounts of all customers whose practices do not meet responsible and sustainable logging standards.
The evidence also raises questions about risk-management procedures within Kina Bank. Ordinarily, repeated payments between a participant in a high-risk sector and individuals occupying, or formerly occupying, senior regulatory roles would be expected to trigger enhanced monitoring under a risk-based AML framework.
It is possible that enhanced due diligence was conducted and that Kina Bank was satisfied these transactions were permissible. Where banks maintain relationships involving elevated risk profiles, strong transaction monitoring and enhanced due diligence procedures are essential to mitigate potential financial-crime risks.
Kina Bank was approached for comment on the findings in this report but did not provide a response.
The questions
The information disclosed in the bank statements of Mee Tung Wong for April 2023 and June 2024 raise a number of serious questions that deserve further investigation.
- When did the payments to Wape Pundiap, Wekre Valentine and Miana Tau Mabone begin and are they still ongoing?
- Were payments made to Wekre Valentine and Miana Tau Mabone while they were still employed by the Customs Service?
- Why were the payments made? What services have been provided in return?
- Were the payments disclosed to the Internal Revenue Commission?
- Are other similar regular payments being made by other businessmen and logging company executives to employees of government departments?
- Why were the payments made from a personal bank account rather than a business account?
- What is and has been Mee Tung Wong’s relationship with the Giant Kingdom group and has he ever acted as a nominee shareholder on behalf of other beneficiaries?
- What steps are Kina and other commercial banks taking to ensure all suspicious transactions involving public servants are identified, reported and investigated?