Breaking news….well kind of.
Shock horror. Our AFP have discovered corruption in Nauru….eventually.
Which leads me to repost an article I wrote over two years ago…..
In June [2016], in an interview with A Current Affair, Nauru’s Justice Minister David Adeang claimed that Nauru has “much lower” rates of sexual assaults, murder and rape than Australia and many refugee assault claims are false or exaggerated.
“[Refugees] have an accident, and they claim that a couple of boys beat them up. That hurts us. They have relationships, somebody gets pregnant, and they claim it was born out of sexual assault and rapes.”
He claimed such allegations were “political” and an attempt to cast aspersions on the Australian government’s offshore detention policies.
So how trustworthy is Adeang?
In June 2015, the ABC revealed Adeang received huge bribesfrom Australian phosphate dealer, Getax, in a plot to overthrow the government in order to receive commercial benefit.
When Mr Adeang was in opposition in 2009 he told former Getax director Ashok Gupta: “We can create a new business relationship that can take this country to a higher level of development and of course taking also your business to even more success”.
Mr Adeang told Getax he had the support of a number of other MPs who were prepared to desert the government.
“We give you full authority to mobilise or lubricate the MPs to secure the vote and win the battle,” Mr Gupta replied.
President Baron Waqa allegedly received $60,000 while the justice minister David Adeang — Nauru’s most powerful politician — received $10,000 per month in 2009 and 2010. Other government MPs are also implicated in the scandal.
Nauru’s police commissioner at the time was expat and former Australian Federal Police officer Richard Britten. He began an investigation into the alleged bribes and was promptly dismissed by the Waqa government who had won the 2013 election.
According to the scathing OECD report on inaction on foreign bribery cases, the AFP are still investigating.
Phosphate Mining Case: A company allegedly bribed parliamentarians in a foreign country to obtain a phosphate mining permit. The company includes two corporate entities: one incorporated in a third country and one incorporated in Australia. Only the entity incorporated in a third country was implicated in the allegations. The AFP interviewed two complainants regarding the allegations, but concluded that the investigation could not continue for lack of jurisdiction. However, in the course of investigation, a number of unrelated financial transactions by the company were identified as suspicious. These transactions were passed to AUSTRAC, who conducted a financial analysis that enabled the AFP to establish a separate evaluation into other possible foreign bribery offences, which is ongoing.
In April, 2013, in the garden of their home, Adeang’s wife Madelyn burnt to death. A brief police statement said she was carrying a bucket of petrol that ignited. But there has never been a coronial inquiry. The island’s resident magistrate and coroner, Australian expat Peter Law, considered the police statement “woefully inadequate” and began preparing a coronial inquiry. Adeang in January, 2014, ordered Law’s arrest and deportation. Law told the ABC that there were no crime scene photographs or witness statements. Local police investigating the death were “scared of Mr Adeang”, Law said, and unwilling to interview the powerful politician.
Nauru’s chief justice was another Australian expat, Geoffrey Eames QC. “I was proposing to fly to Nauru and the government simply told the airline company not to give me a ticket as my visa had been cancelled,” Mr Eames said, naming Adeang as the visa canceller. Eames then resigned his post, telling the media: “The police obviously did not have the enthusiasm to conduct an inquiry. That’s a pretty alarming state of affairs.”
In June 2015, a Senate inquiry was told that, of the 50 cases of assault that have been referred to the Nauruan police by the Department of Immigration over the previous two-and-a-half years, only five charges have been laid. Only two convictions have been recorded.
The Panama papers revealed that Wilson Security, who runs the detention centres on Manus and Nauru, is owned by Hong Kong billionaire Raymond Kwok and his brother Thomas.
Thomas Kwok is in jail in Hong Kong, serving a five-year sentence for bribery handed down in December 2014 over his role in the former British colony’s biggest-ever corruption scandal. Raymond Kwok was also charged but found not guilty.
Nauru charges Australia extortionate visa fees of $1000 a month per detainee. That would be $6m collected this year and a higher amount in previous years. The business visas at $8000 a pop are another nice earner.
We spend about $1 billion a year on the detention centres to line the pockets of corrupt officials and businessmen who couldn’t care less about the well-being of the people they are being paid to protect.
Our politicians and police are fully aware of the corruption allegations yet they choose to believe what Adeang says regarding abuse in the detention camps rather than what countless inquiries have already revealed, and they have no qualms about enriching convicted and suspected criminals.
Why are the AFP impotent to act? Why are we relying on a Nauruan police force who are intimidated by a man whose integrity is highly questionable?
If our government continues to knowingly neglect its duty of care then they must be considered complicit in this corruption and held accountable.
So the AFP finally decided to pay attention and find themselves a patsy. Meanwhile, our government continues to enthusiastically line the pockets of the corrupt officials on Nauru.
