Bonga comes clean
CHAIRMAN of the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee Timothy Bonga has come out public about his trip to Taiwan in 2006.
Mr Bonga spoke out yesterday, a day after various Taiwanese media outlets made inquiries with PNG journalists and other sources about who Mr Bonga was, and what kind of position he held in government.
Taiwanese journalists were seeking information on Mr Bonga and private lawyer Dr Florian Gubon in connection with the US$30 million “cash for recognition” scandal that has caused two high profile politicians to resign.
Mr Bonga and Dr Gubon were apparently in Taiwan at the time when the Taiwanese government secretly released about US$30 million to two middlemen to be paid to PNG in exchange for diplomatic recognition of Taiwan.
The diplomatic recognition never came, and now Taiwanese authorities are seeking to recover the money, or the remainder of it, from the two middlemen.
Those who have resigned in connection with the scandal are vice premier Chiou I-jen and foreign minister James Huang. The two middlemen are Ching Chi-ju, and Singaporean Wu Shih-tsai. Wu has been detained as investigations widen, with indications Taiwan authorities were seeking to question Bonga and Gubon.
In a statement issued yesterday, Mr Bonga confirmed he took a trip to Malaysia and Taiwan that year in his then capacity as chairman of Eda Ranu, Port Moresby’s water company.
But the PAC chairman said the trip was to make arrangements for a sewerage project and a water bottling plant.
Mr Bonga said the Taiwan component of the trip had been facilitated through the Taiwanese Trade Mission in PNG and, while there, he had met with officials and visited two water bottling plants.
“There was press coverage of my visit to the water bottling plants so there might have been some misunderstanding over that,” Mr Bonga said.
Mr Bonga also met with Malaysian and Japanese international bank officials in their respective countries on the same project.
He said in the end, the Government shelved the projects until last year when NEC gave the approval again and, by then, Mr Bonga had left Eda Ranu.
“Any suggestion that I might have personally benefited from any “funds for recognition” deal that might have been under way at that time is misconstrued and false,” Mr Bonga said.
“I had no knowledge of any such deal and I had no authority whatsoever to be acting in that capacity, anyway.”
Mr Bonga contested the elections and won the Nawae Open seat as an independent candidate, but joined the National Alliance party and landed the powerful PAC chairman’s post.
Meanwhile, Dr Gubon confirmed that he was in Taiwan in 2006.
“I recall that sometime towards the end of October 2006, a decision was taken by the Prime Minister, who was also the Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister at that time, to appoint me as PNG’s trade representative to Taiwan,” he said in a statement.
“However, I never took up the appointment because the decision was never finalised and no funds were allocated for me to take up the appointment.
“In the end I withdrew my interest in taking up the appointment and stood for the elections in 2007.”
Nation Stories