by MIKE J. PASSINGAN
The coverage now casting Justice Secretary Dr Eric Kwa as an honest, God-fearing servant of the law leaves out four reports this blog published between February and April 2021. We can find no public answer from Dr Kwa to any of them, and no record that any authority has examined them. In March 2025 the Government reappointed him Secretary, with his Department's release praising his "exceptional leadership".
Money spent on Dr Kwa and his family sits at the centre of the allegations. Citing whistleblowers inside DJAG, the February 2021 reports alleged that public funds paid for his family to live at the Gateway Hotel, put at K239,620 in one post and K358,100 for more than six months of 2019 in another, while his contract carried a housing allowance of K208,000 a year. They alleged K315,364.26 went to Ela Motors for an official vehicle while he kept his car allowance, and that advance contract gratuities of K94,710 paid his children's school fees, reimbursed by the Department rather than deducted from his salary. They alleged he approved K26,400 for a North Coast Aviation charter flying his family to Tewae-Siassi, his home area, recorded as official travel, and a K6,990 mobile phone for himself during a department-wide ban on luxury purchases.
December 2020 brought a run of payments the reports said broke process. A K150,000 advance went to the Gateway Hotel under cheques 024148 and 021319 for services not yet delivered, without Budget Steering Committee endorsement. Island Mobile Hire Car received K234,217.50, including K118,800 for two 15-seater buses the author could not find at the Department's offices, drawn from votes meant for briefed-out legal cases and audit recovery. Consultancies cost K436,499, some of it paid to people the report described as Dr Kwa's associates.
The gravest allegation concerns the people who raised the alarm. On 2 February 2021 this blog reported that the records sat with the Department's finance branch. Two days later it reported that the Finance Manager had been handed a termination letter for being a whistleblower, and that a second officer was dismissed the same day. If that account is accurate, the question is no longer how money was spent but whether the Secretary for Justice moved to silence the officers who questioned it.
Performance was the subject of the April 2021 report, which measured Dr Kwa against the key result areas in his October 2018 contract. It found K1 million in the 2020 capital budget for village court houses in East New Britain, New Ireland and Enga, and no houses built. It said a K2 million ICT allocation went to "areas of less importance", and that no reform legislation reached Parliament in 2019 or 2020.
The posts published documents and carried no response from Dr Kwa, and some figures differ between them. Those gaps are a reason for an audit, not a reason to look away. Unanswered is not the same as untrue, and it is not the same as cleared.
Dr Kwa's own words set the standard. In February 2025 he told DJAG staff they could not come to work every day and talk about justice if they were not doing justice to others. He has told new officers that signing their contracts meant signing their integrity. In April 2024 his Department sat through EU-funded corruption risk training run by UNDP and declared itself committed to preventing corruption. Those standards bind the Secretary as tightly as any junior officer.
Faith is not the issue. This blog noted in 2021 that Dr Kwa professes to be a born-again Christian, and most Papua New Guineans are people of faith. None of that measures how a Secretary handles public money. Piety is not an audit, and a flattering profile is not a clearance from the Auditor-General.
Six questions need answers. Was the hotel stay paid on top of the housing allowance? What official business justified the Siassi charter? Where are the two buses? Did the Secretary for Finance approve commitments drawn from the Brief-Out and Audit Recovery votes? Who signed the Finance Manager's termination letter, and why? Has the Auditor-General or the Ombudsman Commission examined the Department's 2019 and 2020 accounts?
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