Pacific / Papua New Guinea

Former PNG chief justice to lead UBS inquiry

14:56 pm on 8 August 2019

Papua New Guinea's recently retired Chief Justice Sir Salamo Injia will chair the commission of inquiry into the controversial UBS loan.

Sir Salamo Injia Photo: Loop PNG

This was announced by Prime Minister James Marape who commissioned an inquiry into 2014's $US1.2 billion state loan from the Swiss bank UBS.

The loan was used by the government to buy a stake in the resource company Oil Search.

An Ombudsman Commission report tabled in parliament in June suggested the former prime minister Peter O'Neill may have broken the law in taking out the loan.

The report also implicated Mr Marape, who was finance minister at the time.

However he said he won't interfere with the investigation.

"If there were losses made, where are the areas of losses? If there was impropriety or corruption or if there were any monies gained illegally in the transaction hidden somewhere, I will not stand in the way of total deeper investigation into this one so that this becomes a litmus test, or this becomes a pointer to our nation's demand to fight corruption in its fullest."