Papua New Guinea national court reinstates anti-corruption taskforce
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Version 0 of 1. The Papua New Guinea national court this week reinstated the anti-corruption taskforce Sweep which was disbanded by the prime minister, Peter O’Neill, last month after it turned its investigations towards him. O’Neill disbanded the organisation and sacked its chief, Sam Koim, accusing it of being compromised by political and media ties, after new evidence in a long-running corruption investigation prompted an arrest warrant for O’Neill. The warrant related to allegations he authorised multimillion-dollar illegal payments to a Port Moresby law firm, which he has consistently denied. Koim had applied to the court last week to have O’Neill’s decision overturned. Last month Koim visited Australia to speak with the foreign minister, Julie Bishop, and told Guardian Australia the “writing is on the wall” for O’Neill who had sacked Koim and numerous other high ranking officials in response to the warrant. However, much of this is now – for the moment at least – irrelevant, as the attorney general, Ano Pala, has declared new evidence shows the payments to Paraka Lawyers were legal after all, and has advised police commissioner Geoffrey Vaki to drop the case. Pala has been attorney general for a little over two weeks since O’Neill appointed him to replace Kerenga Kua, sacked shortly after the arrest warrant was served. Pala’s decision was widely criticised by supporters of the original investigation. Koim released a statement calling it “misleading” since Pala is using the same evidence as was available when the payments were deemed illegal. “How we established that payments to Paraka Lawyers were illegal and fraudulent are contained in the committal files served on Mr Paul Paraka and other co-accused persons,” said Koim. “We did conduct legal and financial audits on those purported legal bills to arrive at our decision. I presume the politicians and their esteemed legal advisers do have access to those committal files and see for themselves but conveniently put up misleading statements.” The MP and former attorney general Allan Marat also said Pala’s evidence was not new, and called on him to “stop confusing the public with his crap ‘new evidence’ and let his master face the music". "The office of the solicitor general knows about the existing evidence and knows which party was to progress the matters in the higher courts but deliberately neglected to do so for reasons only they know,” he told the PNG daily newspaper the Post Courier. On Friday the court ordered Vaki not to interfere with the work of police when it knocked back his application to have an arrest warrant for O’Neill – which the courts had upheld just days earlier – set aside. After the court upheld the warrant O’Neill pledged to cooperate with police. The judge said the police had a responsibility to carry out the valid arrest warrant, but Vaki told media an arrest was “a long way down the road”. It’s unlikely that any of the top police officers and Vuki allies will act on it. Ousted attorney general Kerenga Kua accused Vaki of serving the prime minister instead of the country and called on Vaki to enforce the warrant. “This sense of impunity and arrogance has to be brought to an end,” he said. “We are a country of law. Everybody, including the prime minister and his police commissioner – I'm saying his police commissioner because this police commissioner doesn't serve PNG but serves the prime minister – so the prime minister and his police commissioner ought to follow the law.” Officers from the fraud squad have twice tried to arrest Vaki for allegedly impeding the investigation, and have been refusing to hand over case files to him. The ABC reported men “loyal” to Vaki had chased the fraud officers from the police headquarters on their second attempt. Instability around the police force is escalating, with the Post Courier reporting on Wednesday that a union was warning of industrial action if the force was used politically. “Already, there had been instances of our members physically confronting each other in a conflicting situation in the name of upholding the rule of law," police association general secretary Clemence Kanau said. "We want to sound a very stern warning in the strongest possible way to the politicians that we may contemplate utilising our industrial muscle if need be to stop politicising the police force." An estimated 400 UPNG students protested on Tuesday, calling for O’Neill to step down, but the demonstration ended as protesters clashed with supporters of O’Neill and police. |