Marape's "do your job" is a confession.

Marape's "do your job" is a confession.

by PAUL L. KEBAIJA

Prime Minister James Marape closed last week's anti-money-laundering conference in Port Moresby by telling the police, the Financial Analysis and Supervision Unit, the asset recovery taskforce, the commercial banks and the Bank of PNG: "Just simply do your job." It was a good line. It was also a confession. A prime minister in his eighth year in office is publicly instructing agencies that answer to his own government to start doing what they were built to do.

Agencies do not fail to follow public money because nobody has asked them to. They fail because they lack investigators, forensic accountants, budgets, independence and political cover, and every one of those is set by the government Marape leads.

Marape is right that scrutiny must reach past politicians to the lawyers, accountants and Section 32 officers who authorise spending. He left out the people who appoint them. Departmental heads are appointed by the National Executive Council he chairs. The Police Commissioner holds office on cabinet's advice. District funds flow through development authorities that MPs themselves chair. A government that controls the appointments, the budgets and the referral pipeline cannot hand the outcome to the agencies it under-resources and then scold them from a lectern.

The FATF evaluation behind February's grey-listing did not find PNG short of laws. It found the country lacked both the ability and the willingness to detect, prosecute and punish money laundering.

Ability is a budget line. Willingness starts at the top.
In April 2022 Marape pledged a multi-agency taskforce to implement the UBS inquiry's recommendations, with police, the Internal Revenue Commission and ICAC investigating jointly.

Papua New Guineans are still owed a public account of what it produced. In 2019 the Ombudsman Commission's own UBS report recommended that he, as finance minister at the time, be referred to a leadership tribunal alongside Peter O'Neill. A prime minister demanding scrutiny of everyone who authorises spending should say plainly what became of that.

By mid-2025 ICAC was in turmoil, its three expatriate commissioners trading criminal allegations and both deputies gone from the country (NewsWire). In February the ARROW working group froze K198.8 million, the largest freeze in police history. A freeze is not a recovery. Until a court forfeits that money and someone is convicted, it is a headline.

The Bank of PNG's governor set the yardstick at last year's inaugural anti-money-laundering conference: success means criminals held to account and proceeds recovered. A year on, and eight months into grey-listing, this year's conference closed with the Prime Minister still asking agencies to start.
Ring-fenced, multi-year budgets for FASU, the fraud directorate, the Public Prosecutor and ICAC are his to give. Quarterly public figures on suspicious transaction reports, referrals, restraining orders, forfeitures and convictions are his to require. The beneficial ownership gaps FATF flagged sit with government, not the banks.

A report to Parliament on every outstanding inquiry recommendation is his to table. Marape told agencies to follow public money. That trail runs through the Cabinet room, where budgets, appointments and referrals are settled. Until he follows it there, "do your job" is advice he should take himself.