The Papua New Guinea government’s financial hub was hit by computer hackers last week, holding state officials at ransom, reports have revealed.

The ransomware attack on the Department of Finance’s Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS) happened last Thursday, locking out government workers who use the system to run the country’s entire financial system.

The Acting Treasurer, Finance Minister Sir John Pundari, confirmed the hacking but told the PNG Post-Courier that the system had been restored and no ransom was paid.

• READ MORE: Ransomware hackers freeze millions in Papua New Guinea aid cash

Sir John said workers were using a temporary accounting system after the IFMS was hit last week but did not reveal the real extent of the damage, saying only that the hackers did not steal anything.

However, they had damaged a system that now puts PNG’s national security at risk.

This is the first time the country’s central financial hub has been hit to such an extent.

Ransomware is a collection of malicious software variants, including viruses, designed by hackers to cause extensive damage or gain unauthorised access to computer networks.

‘Cyber-attack on core server’
“The Government Financial System suffered a cyber-attack in the form of ransomware infiltrating our core server at 1am on Friday, 22 of October 2021,” Sir John said.

“As a result of the ransomware infiltration, the Department of Finance’s IT network was compromised. The department immediately took precautionary steps by closing down the network systems.

“The department has now managed to fully restore the system, however, because of the risk we are playing it safe by not allowing full usage of the affected network.

“While we progress cleaning up the server environment, we have put in temporary measures.

“These include all government departments and agencies having access to commit and process cheques using a controlled environment in Vulupindi Haus.

“All provinces and districts will also have access to commit funds, through a controlled temporary arrangement.

‘Full restored’
“The department is conscious of the security and integrity of its data, thus, restoration of services to all government agencies, including at the sub-national level will be done gradually, bearing in mind the security of individual networks, so as not to compromise or allow any further spread of this malware or other viruses.

“At this stage I wish to state clearly that the government financial system has been fully restored.

“Department of Finance did not pay any ransom to the hacker or any of its third party agents. We have managed to restore normalcy.

“The government and the people of Papua New Guinea can be assured that the government’s financial services will continue as usual.”

Gorethy Kenneth is a senior PNG Post-Courier journalist. Republished with permission.

Finance Minister Sir John Pundari has warned Papua New Guineans who are still holding onto the 102 APEC “on loan” vehicles to return them as soon as possible — or face the law.

A disappointed Sir John, flanked by Finance Secretary Dr Ken Ngangan and Police Commissioner David Manning, said on Friday the ultimatum notice that had been published in newspapers recalling a total of 102 APEC vehicles in the hands of unauthorised people had now lapsed.

Those involved would face the full force of the law.

• READ MORE: ‘We made a terrible mistake’ over Maseratis, admits PNG’s Pundari
• PNG’s Maserati controversy

“The seven-day ultimatum period lapsed on Thursday, September 16, and to date no person has surrendered the APEC vehicles,” he said.

“The Finance Department has requested engagement of police, RTA and MVIL to establish a collective task force to recoup all outstanding APEC vehicles.”

The designated officers from Finance Department, Motor Police – Boroko, NCD Traffic Police, RTA – Road Traffic Enforcement Teams and MVIL are all ready to execute the recovery of the missing APEC vehicles.

The recovery task force team would start executing the recovery soon after the Friday’s meeting.

Taking stock of assets
“Consistent with the requirements of the PFMA and the NPA, all APEC assets including liabilities were assumed by Department of Finance.

The Department of Finance had already taken stock of the assets and was progressively preparing to dispose all of them through public tender.

The disposal of state assets was a financial management process under the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) and the National Procurement Act (NPA).

It is by law that the Department of Finance was now the legitimate custodian of all APEC assets including the vehicles.

He said there are two phases in this disposal exercise – disposal of all 166 donated APEC vehicles, which was completed in June.

“Our donor partners agreed that donated fleets be allocated to schools, hospitals, churches/NGOs, government departments and other important charitable institutions.

“As far as our record is concerned, we have disposed 166 donated vehicles.

Fire trucks, ambulances and buses
“Donated vehicles were collectively fire trucks, ambulances and buses,” he said.

The disposal of 326 state-purchased APEC vehicles and a total of 119 low-end state-purchased APEC vehicles have already been allocated and distributed to various government departments (Public and Statutory Bodies, District and Provincial Governments, and SOEs) used for their administrative purposes.

“Finance Department is in the process of disposing the remaining.

“Some of these fleets are now with agencies and individuals and they have been advised to bring back for disposal.

“For instance, more than 15 vehicles are now utilised on covid-19 operations by Health, Police, and Defence on temporary basis, and about 98 vehicles are in the hands of unauthorised individuals,” he said.

The NEC, in Decision #5112021, has directed the Finance Department to immediately dispose all remaining stocks of APEC vehicles and put to rest the APEC issues.

APEC vehicles recovered and other remaining stocks of APEC vehicles will be prepared for BoS review and evaluation by the Department of Works. The NPC Board will then assess and approve on the BoS evaluation from Works Department.

Public tender
The NPC Board will further approve on the public tender for all remaining stocks of State purchased APEC vehicles.

All remaining stocks of APEC vehicles will be disposed by way of public tender though National Procurement Commission.

As a team and government stakeholders, we look forward to serving the government and its people while following the established government procurement processes.

“The government is committed to ensure that it employs a fair and transparent distribution of wealth for our citizens to benefit in this APEC vehicles disposal processes,” Sir John said.

Papua New Guinea is one of the poorest countries in Apec, with 40 percent of the population living on less than $1 a day, according to the United Nations.

Gorethy Kenneth is a senior PNG Post-Courier journalist.

Described by a Guardian reviewer as “superb hate-reading”, writer and columnist Anand Giridharadas‘s latest book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World investigates the hypocrisy of billionaire “do-gooders”.

He questions how and why we have become reliant on the philanthropy of the super-rich to help solve our biggest global issues, and their role in eroding the public institutions that should be leading the way.

Giridharadas is an editor-at-large for Time magazine and was a foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times from 2005 to 2016. His two previous books are India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking and The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas.

LISTEN: Kim Hill interviewing author Anand Giridharadas

He told Saturday Morning he once rubbed shoulders with the elite at Aspen Institute but had a revelation when seminar rooms there were named after some of the “worst actors in American and global life, David Koch for example and others”.

“We were discussing how to make the world better. And it occurred to me that some of these very people in the room had flown into Aspen from their jobs making the world worse.

“They worked for some of the Silicon Valley tech companies putting our democracy at risk, monopolising the economy and political power, they worked for food companies … lobbying against nutrition wavering, they worked for employers that fought against … raising minimum wages. And then they would fly to Aspen to talk about solving problems they were causing.”

Giridharadas said there was a spectrum of complicity – from the naive to the shrewd – among the richest and most powerful people in the world.

‘Shrewd’ financial crisis actions
He referred to the actions of Goldman Sachs in the global financial crisis of 2008 as shrewd.

“Tech is where the new money, the new power is.”

Tech elites like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, felt privileged because of their finances and that they had mastery over a specific set of tools which they could use to change the world, he said.

“This vision is fundamentally incompatible with democracy.”

He said neoliberalism was a notion that “you should always do what’s good for money because when you do what’s good for money, people benefit somehow”.

But the money never trickles down.

“This was a fraudulent ideology from the beginning.”

‘Reputation laundering’
At the heart of the argument of “winner takes all”, he said flamboyant do-gooding around the world increased one’s chokehold on wealth and power.

“You first get rich by cutting every possible social corner you can cut – you avoid taxes if you can avoid them, you use trusts and Cayman Islands accounts, you lobby for bottle service public policies that are good for you and your rich friends and bad for most people, you avoid paying people in creative ways by suppressing minimum wage, outsourcing to contractors.”

Bottle service, he explained, was like at a nightclub, where a patron commits to spending a large sum for it.

“You now have a lot of money, but you also have a lot of resentment if these connections are going to be made by people about what’s going on.

“Then what you do is you turn around and you start donating a fraction of that money to various forms of elite do-gooding – philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, for-profit social enterprises, maybe something involving Africa even if you’ve never been.”

He called this “reputation laundering”.

Do-gooding a smokscreen
Giridharadas said a person with money and a selfless demeanour could easily reach policymakers.

He said elite do-gooding was a smokescreen so the rich and powerful could continue to have their way.

There was a need for thought leaders to combat plutocracy, he said.

“A lot of these very wealthy business people are smart enough at business to make money and keep power, they’re not intellectuals, they’re not thinkers and they’re not necessarily gifted at spinning the web for justifications for their rule, so there is a need for quirk thinkers to supply the argumentation for an age of plutocracy.”

• Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing The World (Penguin Random House).

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

By Sri Krishnamurthi

Staff and students at the University of the South Pacific have said poor governance, nepotism and negligence were rife at the institution under the leadership of the previous Vice-Chancellor, Professor Rajesh Chandra.

The current Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Pal Ahluwalia raised his concerns in a paper titled ‘Issues, Concern and Breaches of Past Management and Financial Decisions’ which Auckland Accounting firm BDO was asked to investigate and report on.

Professor Ahluwalia listed 26 allegations of mismanagement by professor Chandra who held office from 2008 to 2018.

READ MORE: Former USP Vice Chancellor ‘violated’ norms, say staff and students

The BDO report found governance was weak across USP and implicated some members of USP’s senior management team who were alleged beneficiaries or decision makers.

“Oversight, governance and control is a key weakness across USP. Current policy framework is outdated and isn’t fit for purpose,” the BDO report said.

Frustrated staff such as Dr Morgan Tuimalealiifano, Professor and coordinator of history at USP told a Fijian TV current affairs show Simpson@8, which investigated the allegations of abuse, the incidences had accrued over professor Chandra’s tenure.

“The evidence of our awareness comes from the numerous complaints, the way staff members were treated and the way some decisions were over-ruled, overturned,” Professor Tuimalealiifano told the programme.

“Over the years they accumulated and very little was being done. Sometimes when complaints were lodged the general response was ‘we have to check on our procedures to make sure they were working’, this was getting a bit tiresome.”

Dr Sunil Kumar, an economics lecturer, was more forthright in his assessment of what went on the university which is owned by 12 Pacific countries – Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Samoa.

‘Widespread mismanagement’

“The indications are clear, there has been widespread instances of mismanagement of policies, funds and all kind of resources we are familiar with at USP,” Dr Kumar told the TV programme.

“When there is mismanagement of resources then obviously the university will go through constraints. We were all faced with constraints particularly those who were engaged in delivering the mainstream objectives of the institution.

“There were very basic things we were stifled of, for instance we would not be allowed to buy text books or reference books or our printer material …which means the money was draining out elsewhere and mainstream materials weren’t available as they should have been.”

He said staff had spoken out about governance issues.

“A lot of our staff members have been expressing the element of bad governance that has been happening over the last five, six or seven years during the last Vice-Chancellor’s period.

“The institution suffered very drastically under the former Vice-Chancellor’s leadership.”

New Zealand, which is a key funding partner having signed a $5.15 million agreement with the university back in February, is likely to be concerned about the events that have transpired at USP.

Chandra’s opinion piece

Professor Chandra in an opinion-editorial in the Fiji Sun on September 14 claimed that the BDO Report into allegations of USP mismanagement had found nothing against him.

However, 500 staff and students released a rebuttal, contesting his claims of being “vindicated” from mismanagement during his time at the university.

“Chandra claims that Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC) found no corruption, fraud or abuse of office after two months of investigation. This is not borne out by the FICAC letter to USP, namely, that FICAC has not ceased work but merely suspended its investigation to avoid duplication.

“For FICAC to demonstrate it’s independence it must insist on getting the BDO report and formulate appropriate charges. We are quite certain this will happen in due course, if not in Fiji, then in any jurisdiction of an appropriate member country of USP,” the rebuttal said.

It raised other instances specific of mismanagement.

“When he took professional development leave in September, three months before his retirement in December 2018, one could ask, was that leave for the good of the University? Part of the reported leakages of money would have included Chandra going on USP-paid training leave on the verge of his retirement and keeping his housemaid in a student accommodation facility,” the rebuttal said.

Allegations of negligence

The rebuttal also alleged negligence in infrastructure management.

“Before Chandra’s appointment as the VC and current setbacks under his watch, the University had maintained steady growth and expansion for 40 years.

“The Solomon Islands campus in Honiara has been delayed for at least five years while more funds were channelled to the Laucala Bay fourth campus costing $4.1 million. This point is vindicated by the number of written petitions to Council and formal complaints against him during his term in office.

“During his 10-year term, the facilities used intensely by thousands of students and staff, such as the gym, the dining hall and the student halls, fell into disrepair. Many staff were evicted from quarters because of required maintenance work. Instead, many houses remain derelict and unoccupied.

“On the other hand, the Vice-Chancellor’s residence was always renovated on time at considerable cost to the university. During Cyclone Winston, a power generator installed at the VC’s residence ensured his house was lighted while the campus was in darkness.”

It warned that the USP will have to take care of increased costs for the upkeep of the facilities.

“USP will have to pay more as a result of the deferred maintenance costs now. We lost an iconic building on the campus on the eve of Chandra’s departure, which clearly happened as a result of lack of maintenance and upgrade.”

Current VCP thanked

The rebuttal went on to thank the new VCP for his role for taking on perceived mismanagement at USP.

“The staff appreciate VCP Ahluwalia’s role in drawing the USP Council’s attention to alleged irregularities at the university. We look forward to strengthening of USP’s governance system for posterity which the review commission is tasked to do.”

The committee that the USP Council has set up to make changes is to be chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister of Samoa Fiame Naomi Mata’afa,  Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Henry Puna and Fiji’s Attorney General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.

Political fallout from a controversial loan taken on by Papua New Guinea’s government five years ago could hinder rather than help attempts to remove Prime Minister Peter O’Neill.

O’Neill and other leading officials have been referred by the Ombudsman Commission to a Leadership Tribunal over a US$1.2 billion loan his government took on from Swiss-based investment bank UBS in 2014.

The ombudman’s report, which was completed last December but only handed to the Parliament Speaker, Job Pomat, late last month, is yet to be tabled in the house.

READ MORE: UBS loan to PNG may have breached 15 laws

LISTEN: The controversial loan saga on RNZ Dateline Pacific

However, the report has been published at a time when the parliamentary opposition, bolstered by recent defections from the government, is planning for a vote of no confidence against the prime minister later this month.

The UBS loan was nominally taken for the state to buy a 10 percent stake in oil and gas producer Oil Search, a major player in PNG’s burgeoning petroleum sector.

In last week’s heated Parliament debate the prime minister said it was imperative for the state to regain Oil Search shares.

These were earlier lost after being mortgaged by PNG’s Sir Michael Somare government in 2009 as it sought finance from the United Arab Emirates-based International Petroleum Investment Company to gain equity in the country’s first LNG gas project.

‘Strategic investment’
“The Treasury officials said the Oil Search investment is a strategic investment to government,” O’Neill explained in Parliament last week.

“So the company decided to offer the government of Papua New Guinea at a special issue so we can secure the 10 percent. Why? Because Oil Search, even today, is the biggest company in PNG, is the biggest taxpayer in PNG.

However, the report reveals that the Ombudsman found the prime minister failed to present the government’s proposal on the borrowing of a loan, from UBS’ Australia branch, in Parliament for debate and approval as required by the constitution.

O’Neill was found to have misled the cabinet into approving the loan, among other irregularities. But he was not alone.

The commission’s findings also implicate the former Finance Minister, James Marape, who was found to have signed off the loan’s approval as minister despite knowledge of irregularities and “that his actions were improper”.

According to the opposition’s justice spokesman, Kerenga Kua, the deal and O’Neill’s lead role in pushing it through were very suspicious. He said the greatest transgression in the deal was its commercial injustice.

“In the end we only held that share for about twelve months before it was foreclosed by UBS and sold. So you see we don’t have those shares in our hands any more, because the state fell into default on that loan arrangement.”

Stock price fell
PNG was forced to sell its Oil Search shares when the stock price fell sharply, incurring a big loss. On the other hand, UBS profited around US$83 million in fees, interest and trading revenue from the deal.

Kua said the financial professionals involved in arranging the huge loan must have known the transaction was bound to fail for PNG.

“They would have seen this as a scam, a real professional scam. Because everybody knew of the state’s financial vulnerability, and its lack of cash flow to pay for that loan,” Kua said.

“Yet they created a monster, so that within a matter of months it would fall into default, and then you foreclose on the asset, cover yourself. But what are the people of PNG left with? Nothing, except a debt of 3 billion kina [NZ$1.4 billion].”

But an issue over which the opposition has been attacking O’Neill for years is now proving problematic for the MP seeking to replace the prime minister.

Marape, who resigned last month as minister and left the ruling party, has emerged as the opposition’s choice for alternative prime minister in a motion of confidence against O’Neill which it lodged last week.

But along with other officials, including Government Chief Secretary Isaac Lupari, Treasury Secretary Dairi Vele, and the Central Bank Governor Loi Bakani, Marape has also been referred by the Ombudsman Commission for investigation under the leadership code over the UBS loan. This undermines his own recent attacks on the prime minister.

Questions unsuccessful
Standing on opposite sides of the Parliament chamber for the first time last week, Marape questioned the prime minister about the loan process. The questions were unsuccessful because the prime minister was able to remind Marape that he was also involved in those decisions himself.

While it remains to be seen whether O’Neill, Marape and others will face the Leadership Tribunal, the opposition continues to portray the prime minister as the lead transgressor in the UBS saga and other controversies.

The former Health Minister, Sir Puka Temu, who also left the government last month, has portrayed the prime minister as exerting too much control on state departments, overriding the authority of ministers.

“I resigned because I saw things were not working well. There were a lot of corrupt practices and there were governance processes from agencies and bodies of the state that the leaders did not support,” Sir Puka said.

O’Neill has denied any wrongdoing, characterising the investigation as politically motivated, and part of a “dirty game” by the opposition as it tries to lure support to change the government.

He has indicated that the issue would be the subject of a judicial review.

Although he was a member of the last Somare government in its later stages, O’Neill has placed blame with that regime for placing PNG in a weak position when it sought finance in Abu Dhabi for the LNG Project.

Country ‘mortgaged’
“When they borrowed that money, when the mortgaged not only Oil Search, but they borrowed every state-owned entity of this country,” O’Neill explained.

“So if we wanted to sell one of the planes in Air Niugini, we had to ask the permission of the Arabs. If we wanted to sell one of the buildings in any of the SOEs, we had to ask the Arabs. So literally, we were mortgaged to the Arabs.”

But Kua said the O’Neill government’s purchase of Oil Search shares under the controversial UBS loan was a far more shoddy deal than the IPIC transaction.

“The IPIC transaction led to PNG owning 19.26 percent in the PNG LNG Project. That equity is still there and annually we are receiving over a billion kina in revenue from that project,” he explained.

The UBS loan was opposed from an early stage by the then Treasurer Don Polye, who ultimately refused to sign off on the deal before resigning in protest.

Polye insisted that the loan required parliamentary approval, warning that taking the loan on would break the country’s official debt ceiling.

The former Kandep MP was also not involved in the negotiations with Oil Search on the purchase of the shares.

‘Cup of coffee’
According to the Ombudsman report, the agreement to buy the shares was reached “over a cup of coffee” in a swanky Port Moresby hotel when O’Neill and Vele met with Oil Search’s managing director Peter Botten and its board chair, Gerea Aopi.

The government’s purchase of the Oil Search shares allowed the company to buy a stake in the Elk Antelope gas field in PNG’s Gulf province. This resource is being developed by French company Total SA to be the second major LNG project in PNG.

The Papua LNG Project agreement was signed by Total and the government last month.

However, the agreement immediately preceded the exodus from O’Neill’s ruling party, and was cited as a causal factor in the move by several of the MPs who resigned, including  Marape.

Warning that interests of provinces and landowners were not being protected, the MPs lamented that promised equity and royalty benefits from PNG’s first big LNG gas project, based in Marape’s province, had still not transpired, 10 years after that project agreement.

Meanwhile, the Chief Ombudsman, Richard Pagen, says the commission submitted its final UBS report to the Parliament Speaker, Job Pomat, on April 30.

Asserting that the commission has jurisdiction over the prime minister’s office, Pagen said the Speaker must table the report within 8 sitting days of receiving it.

Public interest
However, he added that the commission decided to publish the report as it considered it a matter of public interest

Only one day of Parliament sitting has lapsed since the handover of the report. That was last Tuesday, May 7, the same day the opposition lodged its motion of no confidence, when Pomat adjourned parliament until May 28.

PNG’s Attorney-General has filed a Supreme Court application to which could yet delay the confidence vote against the prime minister proceeding.

Opposition MPs say they’re confident that the vote will go ahead. The group is not likely to change Marape’s nomination as alternative prime minister, but his involvement in the UBS loan may yet count against him.

• This article is published under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.
• O’Neill on ABC’s Pacific Beat programme
• Marape accuses O’Neill government of ‘sabotage ploy’

Papua New Guinea’s opposition has declared it will fight a good fight to expose and oppose what it describes the 2018 state money plan as a “fake budget”, reports the PNG Post-Courier.

However, the rival daily newspaper, The National, quotes Prime Minister Peter O’Neill as decribing the K14.7 billion (NZ$6.6 billion) Budget as Papua New Guinea’s “best in 16 years”.

The opposition’s Shadow Minister for Treasury and Finance Ian Ling-Stuckey presented the “alternative government” 2018 Budget response titled “Fake Revenues, Fake Loans and a Fake Budget”, the Post-Courier reported.

He said the 2018 Budget was filled with misguided spending priorities, failed plans for financing and yet another huge deficit that would burden “our children” with too much expensive debt.

“Put simply, when I look at the budget, I think of PNG as being similar to a very large and diverse company-PNG Government Limited,” Ling-Stuckey said.

“Is PNG Government Ltd broke? Our people are feeling the pain through a lack of jobs, a lack of incomes, a lack of foreign exchange and a lack of important government services.”

Ling Stuckey said that since 2011 debt had grown from K8 billion (NZ$3.6 billion) to more than K24 billion (NZ$10.8 billion) in just five years.

‘Fake revenue’
“The 2018 Budget has, at this early stage, some K2 billion in ‘fake revenue’. This is not the ‘building block’ that the Minister for Treasury promised. So where is this K2 billion in fake revenue?”

He said to assume that revenues were going to increase as much as 20 percent from K10.6 billion to K12.7 billion in 2017 was wrong.

He said the opposition supported the increase in health expenditure of K285 million but relative to the 2015 Budget, health had been cut by 16 percent in real terms.

“It’s no wonder our health services are declining. It is good that more funds are being provided for medical supplies. However, the underlying issue is a lack of transparent competitive tendering in the medical supply contract,” he said.

Ling Stuckey said the biggest winners in this budget were interest costs, administration, health and APEC.

“Are some of these really the right priorities at this time of severe economic pain and failing government services?

‘Bad signal’
However, The National’s Clifford Faiparik reported that Prime Minister O’Neill criticised the opposition budget response, calling on Ling-Stuckey to withdraw his “fake budget” remark.

“This is very disappointing as it will give a bad signal to our international investors. I’m calling on the Shadow Treasury Ian Ling- Stuckey to withdraw his statement,” he said.

“This is by far one of the best budgets that I have ever seen since I have been in this Parliament for 16 years now. That includes the budget that I have presented as well.”

O’Neill had served as a treasurer in the Sir Michael Somare-led government.

“I say this because this budget is now putting us on a course to make sure that this country’s economic base and growth will be such that it can be self-sustainable,” he said.

“So it is quite disappointing that some of the terminologies that he [Ling-Stuckey] used are unbecoming of leaders of this honourable House. We have to be careful of how we portray the image of our country, our parliament and ourselves.

“Sometimes for short political convenience and point-scoring we say things and do things that are not really in the best interest of our country. We have to be constructive.”

The Post-Courier and The National are Papua New Guinea’s only two daily newspapers.

Two big issues for Vanuatu lead today’s news and need quick resolution to restore confidence in the current administration. There are legal and political sides to both controversies.

The first major outstanding issue is that of the appointment of a Police Commissioner.

A previous Police Service Commission decided that Chief Inspector Albert Nalpini was the best man for the job, but then the commissioner in charge was declared illegal.

The commission’s recommendation for Nalpini’s appointment to the top police job was never enacted; the Head of State never received the recommendation.

Nalpini is now asserting his rights in the matter in court.

Governments have over decades changed the top policemen in Vanuatu: so political has been the posting that we have even seen police commissioners become prime minister.

And there have been mutinies and alleged mutinies. It is just as well all the issues are being brought out in this Supreme Court hearing behind which is the bigger question of whether we can manage our security ourselves or whether we need to appoint outsiders to head the police force again – especially those who may have much wider experience.

On national radio, Vanuatu’s presence on the international Finance Action Taskforce (FATF)’s money-laundering and terrorism financing “grey list” heads the news.

“How grey is our list?” is the question, not just for the broadcasters but also for the people of Vanuatu and foreign investors.

MP Johnny Koanapo, parliamentary secretary for such issues, told Radio Vanuatu midday news that Vanuatu could lose its “light grey” category easily and even find itself again on the black list.

The Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) which assesses countries’ anti-money-laundering regulations, dirty money and counter-terrorism financing met recently in Sydney and Koanapo was present.

Koanapo saw the meeting as “very, very critical for the economy of Vanuatu because of the Vanuatu Finance Centre.”

It appeared to Koanapo that it would be easy for Vanuatu to find itself blacklisted again.

The Prime Minister had directed Vanuatu’s national coordinating committee to meet with all those concerned with the country’s offshore rating and to discuss the issues there.

New legislation is soon to go before Parliament. It is to be hoped this will quickly restore Vanuatu’s financial credibility internationally.

Bob Makin writes on media and current issues regularly for Vanuatu Digest.

• Vanuatu government hopes new laws will save it on global finance ‘grey list’

By Len Garae in Port Vila

Provisional successful candidate for North Ambae Alickson Vira has kept his promise in the Vanuatu snap election by signing what is believed to be the first agreement of its kind anywhere in the country –  allocating 100 percent of his MP’s salary to finance the custom chiefly governance system of his constituency.

More than 300 of his supporters from nearby communities including some 50 custom chiefs were present to celebrate his victory and witness the signing agreement at Waluriki yesterday.

Feasting lasted for a whole day.

Candidate Vira from Waluebue says he has given the chiefs six months to prove to him they are capable of using his salary to improve the administration of their custom governance system.

On the other hand, if they do not use the money effectively, then the agreement they signed would be reviewed.

Asked how he and his young family are going to cope without his salary, he replied: “We will manage like we did on our campaign trail. We had no financial resources. My campaign team and I walked right round Ambae.”

He and his family live in his village of Waluebue in North Ambae with his people. He will only travel to Port Vila when parliament sits.

“If I do not get into Cabinet then I will return home to live with my people at home to work in the garden, make copra and do what my voters do to get by,” he said.

Candidate Vira is a member of the Seventh Day Adventist Faith. Sources from his island say a large number of his voters come from his church.