Papua New Guinea's prime minister Peter O'Neill has welcomed a Supreme Court decision to quash an arrest warrant for him.
The warrant was issued in 2014 following an investigation into alleged illegal state payments of $US30 million to a private law firm, Paraka Lawyers.
PNG PM Peter O'Neill Photo: AFP / Peter Parks
After a long-running series of legal cases around the warrant's validity, the court ruled it was defective due to technicalities.
In a statement, Mr O'Neill said the case was "settled once and for all", remarking that the Supreme Court decision justified the interventions he sought to have the matter tested in the courts.
Now that the matter had been laid to rest, he said that the cost of what he called "the attempted misuse of Government agencies and the courts" could start to be estimated.
"This saga has done great damage to the nation, it has costs millions of kina in the legal process, both to me personally and to the state, and our country's name has been dragged through the mud," he said.
Transparency International PNG's chairman Lawrence Stephens said Mr O'Neill had used the full extent of the law to defend himself.
But according to Mr Stephens, the problem was that there was still no resolution to this and other cases of high level fraud.
"A long and involved and difficult story, a very typical PNG story," Mr Stephens characterised the case around the arrest warrant.
"The case has been around for ages. The information's been with us for ages. And unfortunately we've been chasing after details of an arrest warrant when in fact the problem has been the money that was paid and shouldn't have been paid."
Mr Stephens said that the Paraka payments were just one of a series of misdealings within the Finance Department which constituted a disturbing level of misuse of public funds involving a number of public officials and politicians,
These were the focus of a Commission of Inquiry into the Finance Department which was completed in 2009 but whose recommendations were never followed up on.
"The reality is that we're not getting closer to a solution to that," said Mr Stephens.
Distractions
The prime minister has blamed the case around the Paraka payments on the previous government led by Sir Michael Somare until 2011.
"But no one pursued those who gave those contracts, no one pursued any payments that were made under the Somare Government, no one pursued those who received personal benefits out of those fees," said Mr O'Neill.
"Thankfully, the elections dealt with some of the agitators, and we have seen the back of them with many now out of office or again in the opposition."
Howeve, Mr Stephens said "one should not be distracted by people saying this happened under a previous government when many of the people who will make those comments were part of the previous government where the problems occurred."
The prime minister has repeatedly described the arrest warrant as part of a political witch-hunt since the original complaint was laid with police by then opposition leader Belden Namah in early 2014.
Papua New Guinea MP for Vanimo-Green, Belden Namah. Photo: Alex Smith
"This is a decision for common sense, and it is a decision against people maliciously using our Government agencies and the Courts for malicious politics," said Mr O'Neill in his latest statement.
But Mr Stephens said the heart of the case was not about politics but about an issue of concern to the whole population.
"I don't think I would give much credence to the assertion that it's people with political agendas who are pushing this," he said.
"I would suggest that this is just one of the cases that we need to focus on, and it happens to be a case into which the prime minister's name has been dragged. But it's a major case, and needs focus, just as cases that Belden Namah has been involved in also need focus on."
It's unclear if fraud squad police would seek another arrest warrant for the prime minister over the Paraka payments.
The Police Commissioner Gary Baki, who previously attempted to have the warrant dismissed, has indicated that any new high level fraud cases have to go through him first before an arrest warrant is approved.