LUPARI IN DENIAL AFTER PROVEN HE USED MRDC MONIES TO FUND VOTE BUYING SCHEME IN ALOTAU

by MICHAEL JOSEPH PASSINGAN

 PNG’s biggest daylight robber Isaac Lupari recently put out a statement as chairman of the MRDC board denying that the State-Owned Enterprise had funded the Government camp in Alotau.

Prove it, liar. Submit all of MRDC’s accounts for immediate audit and then we’ll see who is telling the truth.

The statements made by informed sources and published first here on PNG Blogs are true and correct.

 MRDC trust funds (K30 million) and PNG LNG Hides landowner company (K30 million) were robbed by Prime Minister Peter O’Neill to bribe MPs to support the Government in the Vote of No Confidence.

The daylight robberies were carried out by MRDC managing director Augustine Mano and Hides Gas Development Company Libe Parindali on the direct orders of the Prime Minister.

Lupari’s denials are just his usual spin and lies – just like his denials of having defrauded the state of K3.7 million through fake contract compensation claims.

Lupari is one of the Prime Minister’s favorite fellow criminal colleagues and cronies, and he and Mano never let him down when the request for cold hard cash comes through.

Lupari and Mano have stolen, misappropriated and misused millions and millions of kina from the state and MRDC landowner trust funds over the years.

People ask how they can do this and the answer is easy: they hide the MRDC and other State-Owned Enterprise accounts from scrutiny.

This is a favorite trick of the Prime Minister’s which he uses at most SOEs where he appoints crooks and cronies, useless lazy Public Servants and greedy, time-serving private sector representatives as chairmen and directors.

 The recently released Extractive Industries Transparency Report on PNG was scathing in its condemnation of the lack of accountability and transparency at SOEs, and MRDC in particular.

“The MRDC was not able to provide financial data more recent than 2009, despite having submitted its 2011 accounts to the Auditor-General. Given the significant public funds managed by the MRDC, this is of particular concern; it denies the government and people of PNG adequate information about their interests, and leaves considerable scope for misappropriation,” it said.

The rape of landowner trust funds at MRDC is typical of what happens at all SOEs, and the modus operandi is the same: hide the theft by hiding the accounts.

 As previously revealed by PNG Blogs, most SOEs are deliberately kept years behind in their reports to the Auditor-General. All are in breach of their own acts of Parliament, the Audit Act, the Companies Act, various Tax Acts, and so on.

This allows O’Neill and his cronies to rob SOEs at will, and in turn this explains why SOEs are always short of money and requiring injections of taxpayer funds.

Even worse, O’Neill is now the sole trustee of all SOEs through Kumul Consolidated Holdings Ltd, which means he controls all their funds personally.

His rape and pillage is not going to be stopped by individual boards and directors, all of whom are either corrupt or compliant. And not by Kumul chairman Paul Nerau, who is himself infamous for corruption, notably the theft of millions upon millions of kina from Bougainville Development Corporation.

Plenty of the blame for this blatant theft of landowners’ money by O’Neill and his cronies can also be laid at the feet of the large multi-national corporations that contribute by law to trust funds through compensation payments, royalties, development levies, and other payments.

These are the same people named in the EITI report on PNG as being members of the Multi-Stakeholder Group, “which was established in 2013 to steer and oversee the EITI process in PNG, including to provide guidance and oversight over the process of compiling PNG’s first reconciliation report”.

They include:
Mr Dairi Vele
Secretary for Treasury & Alternate Chairman – PNGEITI MSG
Department of Treasury

Mr Shardrick Himata
Secretary
Department of Mineral Policy & Geo-hazards Management

Mr Rendle Rimua
Secretary
Department of Petroleum & Energy

Ms Betty Palaso
Commissioner General
Internal Revenue Commission

Mr Philip Samar
Managing Director
Mineral Resources Authority

Ms Harry Hakaua
Secretary
Department of National Planning & Monitoring

Dr Ken Ngangan
Secretary
Department of Finance

Ms Mayambo Peipul
Project Manager
Business Against Corruption Alliance (BACA)

Ms Wallis Yakam
Executive Officer
Consultative Implementation and Monitoring Council (CIMC)

Mr Paul Barker
Executive Director
Institute of National Affairs (INA)

Fr Denny Guka
Chairman
PNG Council of Churches

Mr Lawrence Stevens
Chairman
Transparency International PNG (TIPNG)

Mr Patrick Yepe Lombaia
Executive Director
PNG Mining Watch Group Association

Mr Thomas Paka
Executive Director
EcoForestry Forum

Mr Greg Anderson
Executive Director
PNG Chamber of Mines & Petroleum

Mr Anthony Smare
Director
Barrick Niugini Ltd

Mr David Wissink
General Manager, Sustainability
Morobe Mining Joint Venture (MMJV)

Mr Peter Aitsi
Country Manager
Newcrest Mining Ltd

Mr Andrew Barry
Managing Director
Exxon-Mobil PNG

Gerea Aopi
Executive General Manager of External Affairs & Sustainability
Oil Search (PNG) Ltd

The EITI Report was sponsored by the Government, Transparency International, the Business Coalition Against Corruption, Oil Search, Barrick Mines, PNG Mining Watch, the ECO Forestry Forum, Morobe Mining, Newcrest Mining, the Consultative Implementation and Monitoring Council, Exxon-Mobil and the PNG Chamber of Mines and Petroleum.

Most of the MSG members and sponsors are involved in the resources sector – including some of the biggest companies in the world, and definitely the biggest in Papua New Guinea.

The EITI Report is incontrovertible evidence that these resources companies and their executives  are aware of the gross abuse of the funds they distribute, putting them in breach of their home governments’ international corruption laws.

But these companies maintain very close relationships with the Prime Minister, who is internationally acknowledged as the most corrupt leader in the Pacific, and they make so much money out of their PNG investments that they are unlikely to rock the boat and insist on even the most basic standards of transparency and accountability.

And it is no coincidence that many of the MSG members are the same compliant time-servers and leeches who are on, or have been on, SOE boards, collecting their substantial board fees and other benefits while the funds they are responsible for are stolen, mismanaged and wasted.

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