The K3 Million Question, A 2013 Treasury cheque, and the paper trail that surfaced around Rainbo Paita's early career.
by PAUL L.KEBAIJA A set of parliamentary questions dated for the sitting of Tuesday 8 September 2020 still offers one of the clearer public windows into the unresolved financial questions that have followed Rainbo Paita into high office. The questions, directed to Prime Minister James Marape by the then-Opposition Leader Belden Namah, whose own standing as Opposition Leader was at that time under challenge in the Supreme Court, do not appear in any Hansard or news archive accessible today. They survive as a document and leaked to PNGBlogs, and the document is specific. In December 2013 the Treasury released a K3 million cheque to PC & M Limited, a consultancy engaged by the National Capital District Commission in 2002 to implement its Youth Employment Scheme. The company's original claim for unpaid invoices covering seven months was said to be K231,000. By 2013 the figure had swollen to K4.986 million, more than twenty times the starting amount, same tactics used by James ...