IRC officer appears in court

By BOURA GORUKILA
AN Internal Revenue Commission officer appeared in court on Friday charged with official corruption, abuse of office, false pretence and dishonestly applying in relation to fraud activities committed at Revenue Haus.
Waigani Committal Court Magistrate Tracy Ganaii adjourned the case to July 23 to allow police to complete their investigations and present their case in the court.
Mailu Malele, 32, of Keagolo village in Rigo, Central, employed as a stamp duty officer, was alleged on Dec 22, 2017, to have abused the authority of his office by soliciting payments from a tax payer in order to offset the full stamp duty assessment of K25,600 on a contract of sale document for a property described as volume 37, folio 71, allotment 9, section 16 and valued at K638,000 at the Glory Development Ltd (GDL).
According to the police statement of facts, Malele had received an email from sales and marketing executive of GDL Fenny Nimalang and requested for assistance on her client Margaret Polapen’s stamp duty matters.
After exchanging emails, Nimalang told Malele that the stamp duty was K25,600 but her client was holding only K10,000.
Malele allegedly instructed them to take the K10,000 and the documents to him for stamping.
They met him at Revenue Haus and he took the documents and cash in an envelope and left.
Malele neither receipted the money nor issued an IRC receipt but allegedly stamped the documents without raising any assessment notice and told them to collect the stamped documents in the afternoon and used the money.