MVIL recovers K9mil of K100mil investment

By ISAAC NICHOLAS
THE Motor Vehicle Insurance Ltd has recovered K9 million from the K100 million invested under questionable circumstances in Australia, chairman Bonny Igime said.
He said the company managed to recoup more than K9 million which had been remitted to its lawyer’s trust accounts in Port Moresby. It would then be returned to the company.
Igime said the K100 million investment MVIL made with Woodlawn Capital Ltd of Lismore, New South Wales, Australia, was executed on July 22, 2009.
Igime said in February this year, he took the company’s board and management to Australia to meet with the executives of the Woodlawn Capital Ltd in Brisbane. 
“We asked Woodlawn executives where they kept the money and what the current net asset value is of the investment,” he said.
“Woodlawn kept evading our questions and came up with an excuse that a substantial amount of MVIL investment was lost during the global financial crisis a few years ago.
“We did not buy into their argument. We suspected that something was seriously wrong with the investment and that we must independently investigate.”
Igime said the board then engaged Gadens Lawyers in Sydney and PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm to conduct a thorough investigation into the accounts of Woodlawn Capital in Australia to ascertain the
net asset value of the investment.
“Gadens Lawyers successfully obtained an interlocutory order in the New South Wales Supreme Court freezing all the accounts of Woodlawn kept by various financial institutions in Australia.
“Our forensic accountants conducted an audit into the frozen accounts and uncovered A$24 million being kept in those accounts, which is equivalent to K50 million,” he said.
“The K50 million plus the K9 million already brought into the country amounted to K59 million.”
Igime also queried transactions made on the MVIL accounts in Australia and questioned where the monies ended up.
He said a full report would be made to the prime minister and public enterprises minister and copies would be given to Sweep team to investigate for appropriate criminal charges to be laid.