10.9 Million Kina to Paper Company, People Suffer while Millions are stolen


A MAJOR growers organisation is hellbent on getting the National Government to reveal how and why it gave millions of kina to a former Cocoa Board boss to educate farmers about a pest threat.

K10.9 million was dispensed by National Planning Department, amid a total of K51 million issued to Finance Minister Peter O’Neill for disbursement. It was granted to a company called Teariki Holdings Limited, owned by Lauatu Tautea , and three other people with the surname Tautea.

Mr Lauatu Tautea who appears to be the manager, is the former chief executive officer of the Cocoa Board of PNG. According to the Registrar of Companies office, Teariki was incorporated on August 10, 2010 and several months later was given K10.9 million by the Government.

It’s believed to be for fighting the cocoa pod borer disease. Mr Tautea’s term of office as Cocoa Board CEO expired on January 2010 but he stayed on as acting CEO until recently.

Another payment of K6 million was paid to a trust account in Aitape, West Sepik Province – also believed to be for a campaign against cocoa pod borer disease.
Thursday’s revelation by the Post-Courier drew a sharply worded statement from the PNG Growers Association’s executive director Paul Arnold and East New Britain branch president Derio Titi, who said they were shocked at the news that “yet another paper farmer (company) had been granted a huge sum of taxpayers money earmarked for the Cocoa Pod Borer’’.

A call to Mr Tautea’s mobile phone yesterday was met with the recorded message that he was “unavailable’’. The house where he reportedly still lives, a Cocoa Board property, looked empty on the weekend except for a yapping dog and a uniformed security guard.

Mr Arnold and Mr Titi said at the weekend that the borer pest had devastated farmers’ incomes over the past two years and “every toea’’ was needed to help farmers regain lost production. Many growers were “in a state of shock’’ and unable to operate or repair their fermentaries or to meet school feels, head taxes and normal cash expenses because cocoa losses were almost 100 per cent.

“Now we learn of huge sums of the Cocoa Pod Bearer money given to bureaucrats and cronies with neither capacity nor experience,’’ the two leaders said.
“Many experienced private sector companies such as CPL (Coconut Products Ltd) and NGIP-Agmark have spent millions of their own funds in the fight against the CPB, with little or no government assistance.

Yet now tax revenue was being “secretly siphoned off’’ by former bureaucrats with what they called “no experience or involvement in the fight against CPB’’.
The association executives joined Rural Industries chairman Brown Bai in calling for the Government to investigate the payment of K10.9 million to Teariki Holdings Ltd.

“We further demand that the bank accounts of Teariki Holdings Ltd be frozen and assets purchased be impounded until the investigations are completed.’’

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