THE RECORD — a weekend series- No. 8 — Augustine Mano, Managing Director, Mineral Resources Development Company

by PAUL L. KEBAIJA

Augustine Mano will not be on a ballot paper in 2027, and no electorate can remove him. He has run the Mineral Resources Development Company since March 2008, under Somare, O'Neill and Marape. MRDC is wholly owned by the State, its accounts are tabled by the Prime Minister, and on its own figures it manages K14.5 billion in assets for landowners and provincial governments in the mining and petroleum provinces. He also chairs the Southern Highlands and Gulf provincial health boards.

The chairman who signs for both sides

Mano has been a director of PNG Air since 2010 and its chairman since 2020. On 31 March 2026 he signed its 2025 accounts. MRDC is the airline's largest shareholder. PNG Air carries K243.6 million in accumulated losses, finished 2025 with liabilities exceeding assets by K12.9 million, and has had its shares suspended on the PNGX since January 2019 for failing to report on time.
The same accounts show who is paying for its new fleet. In 2025 the airline drew K144.8 million from related parties and paid out K128.7 million in aircraft pre-delivery payments. At year end it owed K144.8 million to four MRDC subsidiaries — Petroleum Resources Kutubu, Petroleum Resources Gobe, Gas Resources PNGLNG Pipeline and Bugulim Air Service — money it expects to convert into aircraft leases. MRDC has guaranteed the airline's obligations to its aircraft lessor, DAE, and to BSP, and has promised in writing not to call in amounts owed to it or to the companies it controls until PNG Air can afford to pay.
In May, Mano travelled with the Prime Minister to the ATR factory in Toulouse to announce three more aircraft, bought by three MRDC-managed companies from the Ok Tedi area and leased to PNG Air to fly charters for Ok Tedi Mining. His own disclosure in the airline's annual report shows where he sits on that deal. He is a director of Mineral Resources Star Mountains, one of the buyers. He chairs the airline leasing the aircraft. He is a director of Ok Tedi Mining Limited, the customer.

Who negotiated for the landowners?

PNG Air's governance statement treats a director as independent only if he or she is not directly associated with a shareholder holding more than 15 per cent. Three of the five directors on its 2025 board are listed in the report as MRDC executives: Mano; Simon Woolcott, listed as MRDC's chief finance officer; and Valentina Kaman, MRDC's chief risk officer. The report contradicts itself on who chairs its two board committees, both of which, under its own charter, must be chaired by an independent director. The governance statement names Mano as chair of remuneration and nominations, a role the charter bars the board chairman from holding, and Woolcott as chair of audit. The board pages name Kaman and Watt Kiddie. Only Kiddie is described as independent.

The private interests

The same disclosure table lists Mano as chairman of CIVPAC Limited, Handy Group Limited, SMA Investments and INSPAC Limited. None of these is an MRDC company.
PNGi mapped them in 2017 from Investment Promotion Authority filings. Mano was sole director and shareholder of SMA Investment, which held 51 per cent of the Handy Group, with other members of the Mano family holding a further 44 per cent. In June 2015 SMA paid K6.5 million for half of Civil Contractors Pacific. The purchase contract was first drawn in the name of Eminent Services Limited, a company Mano registered in May 2014 whose sole shareholder gave a Hong Kong address; that name was later struck out and SMA's written in. The seller, Bogasi, belonged to Sundaram Srinivasan. MRDC told the Auditor-General that Bogasi had lent SMA the money for Mano's Land Cruiser when he took up the MRDC job in 2008.

What the Auditor-General found

MRDC's 2008 contract with Mano was worth K750,000 a year. At his written request, K150,000 was paid as salary and K600,000 went to SMA Investment in monthly instalments labelled housing, vehicle and other allowances. The Auditor-General warned the structure could be treated as tax avoidance or evasion, and told MRDC to obtain independent advice and stop paying SMA until it had. Management said the practice was normal and had applied to previous managing directors. By his 2011 report no advice had been produced, and the Auditor-General concluded management was "deliberately allowing this anomaly to continue". He raised it again in 2012 and reported it to ministers in June 2013. MRDC then failed to submit its 2012 and 2013 accounts.
His later report on MRDC's 2016 accounts found directors' remuneration up from K777,505 to K1.83 million without evidence of shareholder approval, overseas travel up from K303,652 to K2.2 million, and MRDC's K19.347 million stake in the Taumeasina Island Resort in Samoa written down to nil. Mano chairs that resort today. The same report recorded a K14 million MRDC loan to PNG Air in 2016, made on the understanding it would become equity. Four years later it had not. Mano was a PNG Air director at the time.

The Gobe judgment

In 2014 MRDC and Petroleum Resources Gobe sued the State for unpaid Gobe royalties. After the Solicitor-General's office failed to appear, the National Court entered summary judgment on 18 May 2018 for more than K180 million. In February 2024 the Supreme Court quashed it (SC2534). The Court held that the law never permitted judgment against the State for the sum claimed, found the award excessive in any event, criticised the plaintiffs for giving the trial judge little if any assistance, described a judgment that "ought never have been given", and ordered MRDC and PRG to pay the State's costs. The claim went back to the National Court for trial. MRDC's lawyers in the case were Jema Lawyers, the firm that, according to the IPA filings PNGi published, prepared Mano's CIVPAC purchase contract and registered Eminent Services.
Petroleum Resources Gobe's 2014 accounts drew an adverse opinion from Deloitte for the third year running; its directors, Mano among them, signed them off as true and fair. PRG is one of the four MRDC companies PNG Air owed money to at the end of 2025.

MRDC's answer

MRDC says its record has turned. From its 2018 accounts onward it has received clean audit opinions, which the Prime Minister has called a first in the company's history. It says it completed 106 audits in 2024 to bring every managed entity up to date, and that 2020 to 2024 are five consecutive unqualified years. When the Prime Minister tabled the 2024 accounts, showing a K22.1 million loss at parent level and K29.3 million in personnel costs, MRDC replied in July that K8.6 million of the loss was a non-cash impairment, that much of the rest was audit costs it chose not to pass on to landowner companies, and that staff costs equal 0.2 per cent of assets under management.
Mano has always denied wrongdoing over the K30 million inter-company loan from Petroleum Resources Gobe to Petroleum Resources Kutubu in 2018, a transfer police examined. MRDC has published a statement from PRG's chairman that an investigation cleared Mano and management of fraud. In October 2011 the acting Prime Minister, Belden Namah, terminated Mano's contract over allegations about MRDC investments; the termination did not hold.

The question for 2027

Landowner money from Gobe, Kutubu and the LNG pipeline route has gone into an airline that has piled up K243.6 million in losses, owes more than it owns and has been suspended from the stock exchange since January 2019. The promise that those landowners' companies will not call their money in until the airline can afford to repay it was given by MRDC, which Mano runs, to the PNG Air board, which Mano chairs. He sat on both sides of that letter.
Clean audits prove the sums add up. They do not prove anyone was acting for the landowners when the sums were struck. Four Auditor-General reports and a quashed K180 million judgment later, the man managing their money is still on both sides of the table. MRDC answers to James Marape. He tabled its accounts and was in Toulouse when the aircraft deal was announced. Before the country votes, that makes this his question to answer.