Wife killer gets suspended sentence, her life was worth K10,000

On August the 28th last year young mother Rayleen Tona was subjected to a horrendous beating by her husband Steven Gabriel. Neighbours heard Tona’s screams, as Gabriel battered the 28 year old. She was left lying on the floor, dying. Gabriel’s assault was so bad it ruptured Rayleen Tona’s spleen. She passed away, alone several hours later from blood loss....

Paraka fails again in his attempts to avoid justice

Notorious lawyer and serial litigator, Paul Paraka, has failed in his latest attempt to avoid justice over an alleged K162 million fraud, committed between 2007 and 2011. The National Court has refused to grant Paraka a court order to quash or permanently block the indictment against him issued by the Public Prosecutor. This is the second such decision by the...

Worrying signs as Mirisim tribunal hit by failings

As Leadership Tribunals go they don’t come much bigger than this. A current Defence Minister and two-term MP, facing twenty-two charges of misconduct in office, including tax evasion, undeclared income, hidden beneficial ownerships in businesses awarded District contracts, falsification of official documents and interference in due process. It is so big in fact the prosecution is being handled by the...

Deadly asbestos danger could be lurking in new builds

There is mounting evidence that potentially deadly asbestos is being used in some new residential and commercial construction projects in PNG, raising serious concerns about how widespread the practice may be and the dangers this poses to the public. Asbestos is a naturally occurring fibre, but inhalation can cause serious lung conditions and deadly cancers. Asbestos was unwittingly used for...

Anti-Money Laundering Probe Puts a Spotlight on BSP and Central Bank Governance

Stripped down to its most basic properties, grand corruption in PNG involves vast sums of money. Corruption schemes are often measured in the millions of Kina, if not tens of millions. Corruption is also widespread within elite circles. Any one year hundreds of scams take place targeting public moneys or landowner funds. These scams syphon off hundreds of millions into...

Illegal logging in Musa Foru stopped

The Popondetta District court has recently issued orders temporarily halting any logging operations in the Musa Foru area of Oro Province. Local landowners say they have never consented to the clearing of their forests. Oro Governor, Gary Juffa, has been assisting the landowners with their court action. He has been battling illegal logging in his Province for many years. Juffa...

Landowner funds flushed down broken corporate pipes

Billions of kina derived from natural resource sales earmarked for landowners is piped through a web of companies en-route to their ultimate intended beneficiary, the designated landowning communities. The model is simple enough. A major oil, gas or mineral development is required to pay landowners a certain share of the profits and royalties. These payments are made to a limited...

Minister’s hotcakes rot in a warehouse while his star continues to shine

In October 2018, in the lead up to Papua New Guinea’s biggest ever role on the world stage, hosting the leaders of the powerful APEC bloc for their annual summit, a potential public relations disaster hit the front pages across the globe. The arrival of the Maserati supercars in Port Moresby was headline news around the world It was revealed...

NHC Targets Grieving Widow in Illegal Sell Off to Foreign Businessperson

Former Forest Minister a lone wolf or is he being thrown to the dogs?

The PNG Forest Authority claims it has revoked a Timber Permit ‘TP 10-11’, awarding logging rights over the Vanimo Timber Rights Purchase Blocks 3, 4 and 5, on the grounds that it was unlawfully issued by a former Forest Minister. According to the Forest Authority, ‘TP 10-11’ was issued by Solan Mirisim, the current Minister for Defence, in contravention of...

Conservation area invaded by logging company

Malaysian logging company, Woodbank Pacific Limited, is chopping down ancient forest trees in a conservation area on the north coast of Madang. This is despite the repeated pleas of the local people that they do not want logging on their customary land. The disputed logging site is situated within the Sumgibar Local level Government area in the Sumkar District of...

Landowner Funds Mismanaged on a Grand Scale: Gobe Petroleum Part 2

Oil has been flowing from the Gobe oilfields in the remote hinterland of Papua New Guinea for almost 25 years. The revenues from that oil has fed the profits of several international oil companies and bloated the incomes of some PNG politicians and bureaucrats, yet, as PNGi has recently exposed government indifference and incompetence means the people whose land is...

Gobe oil owners still in the dark as another SABL falls

In a tale of government neglect and incompetence, the rightful owners of the Gobe oilfields who are entitled to tens millions of kina in unpaid royalties have still to be identified almost 25 years after oil started flowing from their land. The Gobe oilfields straddle the border of the Southern Highlands and Gulf Provinces and comprise 3 separate deposits discovered...

Revealed – The Two MPs Tied to Abuse of Office Scandal

On the 8th of April former Works Secretary (2009-2013) Joel Luma was found guilty of the criminal offence, abuse of office, by the National Court of Papua New Guinea. The prosecution alleged during 2009-2011, 44 contracts valued at K9.6 million were issued by the then Works Secretary Joel Luma to the company Road Stoa Limited in flagrant violation of the...

Sand miners sent packing but now logging threatens Madang coast

As one coastal community in Madang celebrates their success in defeating a sand mining proposal, further north a Malaysian logging company is threatening to wreak another form of destruction on their neighbours. Innovest Limited, a company owned by the powerful Hii family, claims to have five-year permit to log the forests inland from Ulingan Bay. Local people are adamant that...

Australian Aristocrats and Sir Ted Diro at the Centre of ‘Massive Fraud’ Allegations

In 2016 a parliamentary question was submitted to the Minister for Commerce and Trade Richard Maru. It centred on a 5,000 hectare plantation in Central Province known as Koitaki plantation. The Member for Kairuku-Hiri, Peter Isoaimo, noted ‘the ownership and sale of Koitaki Plantation has somehow landed in the hands of shareholders and directors of a company that is associated...

From Zero to Hero for Tumla Investment

Irad Nati is not shy about admitting he has ‘developed enough knowledge in how the PNG government system works’ to make him a leader in the world of business. Irad Nati says he knows how the PNG government system works. It is knowledge that Nati acquired first hand, working at the very heart of government in the Ministerial Office of...

Is Rimbunan Hijau ending its plunder of PNG forests?

The RH name has become synomous with political corruption in PNG For more than 25 years Rimbunan Hijau has dominated the logging industry in Papua New Guinea; so much so that the name ‘RH’ has become ‘popularly synonymous not just with the problems of the logging sector but with corruption and anti- Chinese sentiments in general’. [1] At it’s peak,...

Is Ihu SEZ a new honey pot for rent seekers and profiteers?

Reportedly, a gleaming new city is about to arise from the swamps, grasslands and forests of Gulf Province. Across 85,000 hectares of land a mirage-like world of sparkling new government buildings, world class public services, a light-rail system, a deep-sea port, new military base with its own airstrip, hotels and an international airport are all to be built. There will...

New forest portal to shine a light on Papua New Guinea’s logging industry

For more than twenty-five years, deep in the remote and inaccessible tropical forests of Papua New Guinea, a huge industrial complex has been operating; foreign owned companies have been bulldozing tracks, felling huge trees, cutting logs and dragging them to the coast to be loaded onto ships and sent overseas. According to official records, since 1993, at least 78 million...

O’Neill Linked to Irregular Land Deal Uncovered by Deloitte

Through a skeletal structure that wraps around the earth of the Southern Highlands, the Kutubu Petroleum Project extracts a rich interior of oil held beneath the surface. Once exported onto heaving global markets, this translates annually into hundreds of millions in revenue for provincial governments and Fasu, Foe and Kikori landowners, channelled through a holding vehicle, Petroleum Resources Kutubu Limited....

Malaysian logging company guilty of human rights abuse

Madang Timbers, part of the Malaysian owned WTK Group, has been found guilty of breaching the human rights of a group of eleven security guards employed by the company. In 2015, the logging company stopped paying the men for the actual hours they worked and instead imposed a fixed salary of K450 per fortnight. This deprived the guards of the...

‘Too good to be true’: the deal with an Isis-linked Australian family that betrayed PNG’s most marginalised

A sustainable forestry project established to develop some of PNG’s most marginalised communities has become mired in an international corruption scandal “There is always the stench of corruption around a deal that is too bad to be true or too good to be true,” a full-page advertisement in Papua New Guinea’s Post Courier baldly declared in May 2018. “Usually, because...

Cash Starved Audit Office Ploughs on in Rotten Fields

The Auditor General’s Office is a critical organ in the national fight against corruption. A well funded and active audit office has the capacity to proactively identify state bodies where illegal activities are taking place. It can also warn government where there is a significant risk illegal activities are taking place due to non compliance with financial procedures and laws....