By PNG Echo
(Keep reading to the end where the document that answers the question is supplied.)
It was the National Executive Council (NEC) that established Task Force Sweep and it was the NEC that terminated the agency.
But Sam Koim couldn’t accept the inevitable. He was enjoying his elevated and internationally lauded position, notwithstanding his inexperienced and inept management of the agency that saw only half of his prosecutions make it through a committal hearing and of many of those that have, have been an unnecessary failure, according to a concerned legal expert.
Koim recently stated of the decommissioning of the agency:
It’s like the accusers threw us out of the ship in the middle of the deep ocean and expected us to drown and die, but when we made it to the shore alive, they then turned around and accused us saying “why are you still surviving?”
Actually, the situation was anything but.
They were let out of a very leaky, inadequate boat on the Jetty and told to go home – but Koim kept wading back into the sea then expecting someone to pay for expensive lifeguards to get into the surf with him and keep his head above water. It has been a wilful and continuing act.
The analogy is plain: We are talking about his many and various attempts to keep the agency afloat using expensive and illegally hired lawyers and barristers. Recently, for the third time, the Supreme Court made the ruling of their illegality bringing into question every and any court victory he may have obtained using the expensive counsel
Anyway, the question of who has been funding the agency as well as funding the litigation has been the burning question.
Ask no more.
Hereunder is an account from the Grand Papua Hotel for Mr Greg Egan, Koim’s senior counsel of choice, accomodation and food. The entity that was picking up the tab was Posman Kua, Aisi – Kerenga Kua’s old law firm.
I am also reliably informed that the ‘Dream Inn’ a Kua enterprise has also been used extensively – but that will remain speculation until someone can find an account I can publish. For now, let’s go with the one we have.
This is page 6 of Mr Egan’s accommodation bill with the final amount disclosed. I have receipt of the other five pages. Please note who’s picking up the tab.
Thanks Susan and PNG Echo for revealing such information. Papua New Guineans need to know. Mr. Sam Koim is answerable to many catastrophic damages that the country went through during his reign as Task Force Sweep Chairman. He referred many high profile figures without hard evidence. Now it will turn back on him.
Good article but I just looked at the QLD Bar’s website and Greg Egan is not senior counsel: he does not have that level of eminence and I doubt he ever will except n the eyes of PNG newspapers who think that any barrister who comes from Australia is a QC or SC.
Susan, will you be explaining to us why Koim’s application for judicial review has not been heard after more than two years? Is Judge Mikail slow or is Koim stalling?
It is true that if you read something often enough you start believing it – and I am guilty as charged in assuming all the references to his legal stature were correct. And yes, it does seem an inordinately long time that we are waiting for Koim’s case to re- emerge. I’ll check on that.
Dr. Merrell, I refer to an excerpt of your article, which reads in part – “I am also reliably informed that the ‘Dream Inn’ a Kua enterprise has also been used extensively”. You certainly would not be wrong there; and you are most definitely on the right track. There are a few (to say the least) who are concerned about transparency (or moreso the alarming lack of it) in relation to investigations which are being undertaken by Investigative Task Force Sweep – a body which – in the first instance – lacks any statutory basis, and secondly, whose authority has been revoked by the NEC (which established it in the first instance). It is inconceivable that such decision (of the NEC) should be so easily and readily be held to be subject to the judicial review jurisdiction of the National Court. A more fundamental point, in my respectful view, which ought to have been subject to more stringent and impartial judicial scrutiny would have been the issue of Sam Koim’s locus standi to challenge the decision of the NEC which revoked the establishment of ITSF, and which decision consequentially resulted in the revocation of Koim’s appointment. How Koim’s apparent failure to establish his entitlement at law to continue as Chairman of ITSF could escape an impartial assessment is beyond comprehension. It goes without saying that the issue of whether it (the decision of the NEC to revoke the establishment of ITSF) was in the interests of public policy, should never have been allowed to pass the bar table.
It is unfortunate that Koim obtained a court order pending the hearing of his application for judicial review that stayed the entire NEC decision and thereby not only stopped the shut down of ITFS but also stopped a former judge, Graham Ellis SC, from tackling corruption as the appointed Chairman of the Interim Office Against Corruption.
Also, it seems to me that Koim’s chasing the Prime Minister is the reason why we do not yet have an ICAC
I don’t really understand what I am actually reading here, to be quite honest…,
People have been wondering who’s been funding Koim’s defunded TFS and paying his counsel from Australia, Greg Egan (that he has been engaging illegally aacording to three different Supreme Court judgments). The clue is in the entity that is picking up the tab at the Grand Papua – Kerenga Kua’s law firm Posman, Kua, Aisi – it’s a strong indication that the allegation of being politically compromised is correct. He who pays the Piper calls the tune.