A Nation on the Grey List, and Its Leader is Chasing a Footballer

By M.J. Passingan

There is something truly stomach-turning about a Prime Minister who finds time to sit courtside at a Digicel ExxonMobil Cup double-header, waving like a celebrity and cosying up to Wests Tigers halfback Jarome Luai, while the country he supposedly leads remains stuck on the Financial Action Task Force grey list an international badge of shame that screams Papua New Guinea cannot be trusted with dirty money.

James Marape has had 7 years as Prime Minister. Seven years of empty promises to “slay the cancer of corruption.” Seven years of inquiries that conveniently stall, ministers who stay in cabinet despite allegations, and a financial system so porous that the FATF placed PNG back on its grey list in February 2026 for “strategic deficiencies” in fighting money laundering and terrorist financing. This isn’t a minor bureaucratic slap on the wrist. It strangles correspondent banking, spikes transaction costs for every citizen and business, and tells serious investors to run for the hills. Countries fight like hell to escape the grey list. Marape’s government has had plenty of warning and delivered nothing but more talk.

Yet here he is, not in a crisis meeting with the central bank or the Ombudsman, but in the stands next to a footballer, personally lending the prestige of his office to the recruitment drive of a rugby league franchise that doesn’t even exist yet in the NRL. He called Luai’s visit “heartwarming.” He spoke of rugby league as a unifying force. He positioned himself as PNG’s biggest booster for a commercial sports enterprise backed by Australian money. The man who claims to put “national unity” first is using his platform to pimp an NRL expansion bid while his own government’s failures keep the country on the grey list.

Let’s be brutally clear about the stench of corruption that clings to this administration:

PNG Ports scandal
After damning revelations by the ABC and OCCRP about Australian businessman Don Matheson allegedly making payments to PNG Ports officials before landing lucrative contracts, Marape ordered an investigation then spent years publicly attacking the probe and defending his “golf buddy” relationship with Matheson. The man supposedly fighting corruption was busy protecting the very network under scrutiny.

UBS loan scandal
Marape ordered an inquiry years ago, then spent the next half-decade dismissing any suggestion of his own entanglement as “political smokescreens” by opponents who are themselves under investigation. The same man who promised accountability now claims he is the victim of a conspiracy.

Defence Force recruitment and other scandals.
Opposition Leader James Nomane has openly accused Marape of deception, lying to the public, and protecting political allies who should have been sacked. The Prime Minister who talks tough on corruption has presided over a Defence Force being “dismantled from within” by cronyism.

Connect PNG and broader rot:
Allegations of corruption in major infrastructure programs keep surfacing. The response? More denials, more delays, more protection of the powerful.

Transparency International’s 2026 Corruption Perceptions Index gave PNG just 26 out of 100 its lowest score in a decade. That is not bad luck. That is governance failure at the highest level, under James Marape’s watch.

This rugby league fixation is not patriotism. It is distraction theatre. A desperate photo-op campaign to make Marape look like a man of the people while the institutions he controls rot from the top. He has become a promotional vehicle for an NRL team that will line Australian pockets far more than it will deliver for ordinary Papua New Guineans. Rugby league matters in PNG nobody disputes that. But a Prime Minister’s job is not to be a cheerleader in the grandstand. His job is to govern. To prosecute thieves. To clean the financial system. To make the extraordinary natural wealth of this country benefit its people instead of disappearing into offshore accounts and the pockets of well-connected cronies.

James Marape is not a bad man in the cartoon-villain sense. He is something worse: a distracted, self-serving operator who has mastered the language of integrity while delivering the opposite. He promised ICAC. He delivered excuses. He promised to exit the grey list quickly. He delivered more grey-listing. He promised to protect the Defence Force and public institutions. He delivered protection for the corrupt.

A nation does not need its leader starstruck by a footballer. It needs him terrifying the corrupt in his own cabinet, terrifying the FATF with real action, and terrifying the kleptocrats who have treated PNG as their personal ATM for decades. Until that happens, every smiling grandstand photo with Jarome Luai is not a proud moment for the nation, it is an indictment of a Prime Minister who has chosen spectacle over substance, photo ops over accountability, and his own political survival over the future of the country he claims to love.

PNG deserves better than James Marape. The grey list proves it. The scandals prove it. The low corruption score proves it. And the fact that he is still smiling for the cameras while the country bleeds proves it most of all.

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