Another Recycled Insider: Why Isaac Lupari's KPHL Appointment Should Trouble Every Papua New Guinean

By PETER KOMBEAKALI

The announcement that Isaac Lupari will succeed Gerea Aopi as chairman of Kumul Petroleum Holdings Limited on 19 May is being presented as routine succession. It is anything but routine. KPHL sits on the country's most valuable petroleum assets and is preparing to take up state equity in the Papua LNG project billions of kina in national wealth. The man now handed the chair has spent the better part of two decades trailed by allegations that, in any functioning democracy, would have disqualified him from public office long ago.

Start with the public record. The 2009 Commission of Inquiry into the Department of Finance recommended that Lupari be referred to the Fraud Squad for criminal investigation after finding he had collected more than K1 million in out-of-court settlements on legal claims totalling K3.7 million for "unlawful termination" of contracts that overlapped claims the Department of Personnel Management described as fraudulent because they sought triple and quadruple payment for the same periods. Paul Paraka's firm, which assisted the claims, was paid K800,000 in uncontested legal fees for what the Commission called "a minimal amount of work" and "a charade to legitimise excessive costs." No charges ever followed. No referral to the Ombudsman ever produced a sanction.

Then came APEC 2018. According to reporting by The Australian and the Post Courier, the APEC Authority's own chief executive, Chris Hawkins, accused Lupari of approving roughly 300 individual payments of under K50,000 conveniently below the threshold requiring higher scrutiny to a small group of hire-car companies, including K2.6 million in 66 payments to a single firm whose cars Hawkins says may never have been provided. Twenty Glock pistols for police were reportedly invoiced at nearly twenty times their US retail price.

Then the Paladin affair. Sydney Morning Herald reporting and an Australian Senate inquiry placed Lupari among the senior PNG figures who allegedly solicited "financial support" from the Australian-funded Manus Island contractor including, it is alleged, a K16 million political donation request in 2017 and a personal payment demand of K35,000 in 2019. Lupari denies wrongdoing.

The Ombudsman Commission, in its UBS loan inquiry, found Lupari then Chief of Staff had "wrongly and improperly" issued directives to state entities he had no legal authority to instruct, in a debacle that cost the country an estimated K1 billion. He has also faced documented conflict-of-interest questions over his Dirio Gas directorship while overseeing PNG Power, and presided as MRDC chairman over an entity the Auditor General has repeatedly flagged for missing landowner funds.

Lupari has never been convicted of any offence. But credibility for a chairmanship of this magnitude is not measured by the absence of convictions it is measured by the presence of public trust. By that standard, Prime Minister Marape owes Papua New Guineans an explanation. Why him? Why now? And who, exactly, is this appointment really meant to serve?