by PAUL L. KEBAIJA
William Duma has sat in the National Parliament since 2002. He leads the United Resources Party, a bloc small enough to be indispensable and disciplined enough to be courted, which is why he has served in cabinet under Somare, under O'Neill, and now under Marape. Since 2020 he has been Minister for State Enterprises, holding carriage of Air Niugini, PNG Power and PNG Ports. In July 2026 the Prime Minister publicly commended him for the Highlands 132kV transmission line. In 2022 the people of Hagen returned him with 48,528 votes; the runner-up managed 13,946.
That is the fact this series exists to sit beside the rest of the record. Between 2009 and 2017, three separate transactions involving Duma were examined, by the Supreme Court, by an administrative inquiry commissioned by a Prime Minister, and by the Australian Financial Review working from a leaked corporate archive. All three share a structure. None produced a charge.
Paga Hill, 2009
Duma was Minister for Petroleum and Energy. A company he owned, Kopana Investments, applied for state leases over harbourfront land at Paga Hill on 27 April 2009. The forfeiture of those leases from the previous holder, Noko No. 96, was not publicly gazetted until 3 September, more than four months later.
What followed moved quickly. On 14 September the Minister for Lands exempted the portions from public advertisement. On 19 September the Land Board recommended Kopana. On 25 November the leases were awarded. In 2012 the Supreme Court, reviewing the sequence, observed that leases had been exempted from advertisement and granted to a company owned by a ministerial colleague of the Minister making the decisions, and that Kopana had applied well before forfeiture, grounds, the Court agreed with the primary judge, for reasonable suspicion.
The land adjoined the proposed Paga Hill Estate, a development later declared a project of national significance and valued in the billions of kina. Its master plan required the portions Kopana had acquired.
Horizon Oil, 2010–11
Still Petroleum Minister, Duma determined in 2010 that the ASX-listed Horizon Oil had breached the conditions of exploration licence PRL 5 and moved to revoke it. Horizon litigated. Then it stopped litigating.
The March 2011 settlement left Horizon with 70 per cent of a new licence, PRL 21. Dabajodi International Energy, later Kina Petroleum, received 20 per cent. A restructured company called Elevala Energy received the remaining 10. Elevala's sole director and shareholder, the lawyer Simon Ketan, had taken control of it four days before the licence was granted. Ketan had worked at the same firm as Duma and, after Duma entered politics, acted as his personal lawyer.
The AFR could find no record of Elevala trading, employing anyone, or paying a dividend. Its registered capital was 88 cents. Ten weeks after the grant, Elevala wanted out. Lawyers for Horizon's Canadian joint-venture partner Talisman Energy warned of apparently corrupt conduct in how Elevala had acquired its interest, and Talisman withdrew. Horizon bought the whole 10 per cent stake itself, for US$10.3 million.
The story broke in February 2020. The AFP confirmed it had received the documents and was assessing them. Horizon terminated chief executive Michael Sheridan. In June 2020 an independent review commissioned by Horizon concluded the payment had been a legitimate purchase of an interest, not a bribe.
Duma denied wrongdoing throughout. He said he did not understand the basis for the claim that he and Ketan were close or politically connected, and characterised the suggestion he had acted improperly as "political witch-hunting with malicious intent to make me look bad".
Indooroopilly, November 2011
Two months after the first story, the AFR published a second. Westpac, the Commonwealth Bank and Macquarie Group had each notified AUSTRAC of suspicious transactions concerning the possible laundering of the US$10.3 million. A A$1.5 million house on Glencairn Avenue in the Brisbane suburb of Indooroopilly was purchased in November 2011, a month after Horizon's final payment, in the name of Baccarat Investment Solutions, a company controlled by former Macquarie private banker Darrell Seeto. Duma's family reportedly lived in it while his sons attended the nearby St Peter's Lutheran College.
In December 2018 Seeto was granted Papua New Guinean citizenship. In January 2019 Duma appointed him deputy chairman of the National Development Bank, the institution mandated to lend to small and medium PNG businesses.
Manu Manu, 2015–17
By now Minister for State Enterprises. In July 2015 Kurkuramb Estates Limited obtained a state lease over Portion 406 — 847 hectares on the Hiritano Highway, for K650 in application fees. The land was valued at K84,420. On 3 November 2015 the Valuer General's office valued it at K46.6 million, a rise of 555 times in three months. The State contracted to buy it for the Defence Force at that figure.
Kurkuramb's registered office and postal address were Duma's own. Its sole shareholder and director, Christopher Polos, was confirmed by Duma to the inquiry, in a single word, as his wife's biological brother, and then, a month later, was not. When the K46.6 million agreement lacked Kurkuramb's corporate seal, the managing director of Kumul Consolidated Holdings emailed the Minister about it rather than the company's sole director. The same executive later directed that electronic files on Portion 406 be deleted.
John Griffin QC, running an administrative inquiry that could not subpoena a witness or a document, found the transaction bore obvious marks of manipulation and dishonesty, that the valuation appeared fraudulently high, and that the disappearance of the Lands Department files supported a conclusion of corruption. Police recommended the matter be closed. It was.
The pattern, and the question
Strip the three episodes of their detail and the same machine appears: a discretionary decision that only the Minister could make; a counterparty with no capital, no staff and no trading history; a personal connection first denied and later partly conceded; and a windfall that lands beside him rather than on him.
What is equally consistent is what happened next. An inquiry without the power to compel. A police force that closed the file. A company that investigated itself and was satisfied. A foreign police service that received the documents and has said nothing in six years. No Leadership Code referral has ever proceeded to tribunal on any of it.
None of this is a finding of criminal guilt, and we do not assert one. It is the record findable, dated, and sourced. In 2027 the voters of Hagen will be asked to renew a mandate for the twenty-fifth consecutive year. This is what they will be renewing it against.
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*Mr Duma has consistently denied any wrongdoing in all three matters. This publication has written to his office seeking comment and will publish any response in full.*
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