Minister cancels Wartoto’s visa over theft charges

 AUSTRALIA’S Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr has used his special powers to cancel the 457 visa issued to PNG businessman Eremas Wartoto over the alleged theft of A$30 million (K62 million).

Carr’s decision to revoke Wartoto’s visa comes a week after Fairfax (newspapers) revealed that the businessman was using his 457 visa to avoid arrest and prosecution. 

Sources in PNG confirmed that Wartoto and his immediate family members in Queensland were contacted by immigration authorities last week and told that the federal government was cancelling their visas.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Saturday that Wartoto’s visa was cancelled by Carr using laws that allowed him to revoke a 457 on the basis that the holder posed “a risk to the health, safety or good order of the Australian community”.

Wartoto has been living in Australia since he was charged in absentia in August 2011 with serious corruption offences.

The visa allowed Wartoto to live in Cairns and fly in and out of Australia to several Asian countries.

Wartoto fled Australia to PNG last week after Fairfax media tried to photograph him in Queensland. 

He remained on the run in PNG until Friday, when anti-corruption investigators tracked him to the port town of Kimbe and arrested him, the newspaper said.

Wartoto obtained a 457 visa in July 2011 – the foreign skilled worker visa at the centre of a Gillard government crackdown – after learning PNG authorities planned to charge him in August, 2011.

Since then he has claimed to be too ill to face trial in Port Moresby but travel records reveal he has travelled to Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Fiji and the Solomon Islands in the past two years and has been able to return to live in Australia each time, thanks to his 457 visa.

A spokesman for Carr said: ‘’Given the legal issues … it was not possible to take action until now.’’

Wartoto obtained his 457 visa after a Cairns car hire company he owns sponsored him on the basis there was a shortage of “general corporate managers’’ in the area.