Concern on Apec accounts

The National National

By HELEN TARAWA
CONCERN has been raised over the payment of K2.6 million to a hire car company “not engaged by the Apec Authority” in 2017, as the audit of total funds used during the event last year remains incomplete.
The concern was raised in a recent letter to Prime Minister James Marape by Apec Coordination Authority chief executive officer Chris Hawkins. Marape is now the minister responsible for Apec.
Hawkins told The National yesterday that “multiple payments” of more than K2.6 million “not authorised by the authority” were made to “one hire car company”. He said the payments were made by the Department of Prime Minister and the National Executive Council.
Hawkins said between 2015 and 2018, a total of 2,223 payments were made totalling K160,486,121. Of the 2,223, 514 sets of payment documents “have been reviewed to this point amounting to K24,169,039”.
“A number of payments amounting to K3,245,052 have been identified as not being authorised by the Apec Authority,” he said.
“Remaining to be examined are 1,709 sets of documents that include around 300 individual payments of less than K50,000 made to a number of companies over a four-day period at the end of the financial year in 2017. As an example, this includes payments made to one hire car company of more than K2.6 million through 66 individual payments under K50,000.
“This hire car company had not been engaged by the Apec Authority and this is just one example of more than a dozen hire car companies that received multiple payments of amounts under the K50,000 threshold during this period.”
He also said investigations had showed the hire of helicopters for K68,746 “buried in Apec accounts”.
“The Apec Authority hired a single helicopter for Apec. So this has been moved to the questionable claims list for deeper investigation,” he said.
“We are talking about 30,000 transactions to account for, including 20,000 line payments for allowances to personnel from various agencies, that all have to be evaluated and accounted for. So it is very complex and must be done properly.”

4 comments

  • The auditng was suppose to have been done at the compulsory closure of the APEC meeting hence as it is now, the Chief Executive Officer and his staff must be held accountable to produce an report which will be acceptable to the 8 million people of PNG.
    Money that should have been properly spent on Education,Haus Sik and other public expenditure have been misappropiated and Chief Hawkins and team must be investigated and if found guilty, let the law take its course.

    • Why can’t chief executive officer Chris Hawkins, just name the hire car? This is our money and we have the right to know. This is going around in circles..frustrated reader

  • Name the hire car company its owners and name the person who approved the payment..I won’t be surprise that we have a connection between the people who raised the invoices and people who approved the payments. My goodness we are talking about taxpayers monies here and some idiots are helping themselves from the side. If Chris Hawkins as the APEC CEO doesn’t have any answer he should be summoned to court.

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