Cock fighting larrikin now PNG carbon trader
17 July 2009
AAP’s Port Moresby correspondent ILYA GRIDNEFF has been doing some digging around the PNG carbon trading imbroglio, and has discovered some colourful characters…
A former Australian horse trainer who ran a Philippines cock fighting business is involved
in carbon deals central to an inquiry into PNG
Kirk William Roberts denies any wrongdoing in his carbon dealings in PNG and claims former business associates are running a smear campaign against him.
"I am a loveable larrikin," Roberts said from his Port Moresby home. "I've done nothing wrong, we're doing good things. I am the most beneficial foreigner to this country right now."
But Roberts' role in a series of carbon deals is now at the crux of PNG's carbon trading woes that includes an investigation in Dr Theo Yasause's role as director of the country's Office of Climate Change.
Dr Yasause gave Hong Kong based company Forest Top and Mr Roberts, a director of another company called Nupan PNG, an official mandate to trade carbon after Roberts locked in local landowners for potential carbon deals.
But documents show Dr Yasause issued the mandate when he was the PNG prime minister's chief of staff, signing documents as interim director of OCC on 12 May 2008, one month before he was officially appointed director.
The documents show Dr Yasause allowed Mr Roberts to go to the world market offering lucrative carbon credits in PNG. On the same day Roberts and Yasause also signed a memorandum of understanding with Forest Top director David Leamey to facilitate international carbon credit deals.
Forest Top then gave Australian company Carbon Planet the exclusive rights to broker the credits and provide technical and scientific input to verify the credits. Forest Top was to be the body that distributed carbon credit sale proceeds to the stakeholders like Nupan, Carbon Planet and landowners.
An Australian Securities and Investments Commission document shows Carbon Planet last year gave $1.2 million for projects in PNG which were associated with Nupan and Forest Top.
Carbon Planet chairman Jim Johnson said they still stood by their PNG deals but declined to comment further. The deal between Yasause and Roberts' company Nupan became public last month, and as PNG does not have any carbon policy nor legislation for such ventures, the PNG government sidelined Yasause and launched a full investigation into the OCC.
The prime minister's media secretary Betha Somare said any of the deals struck were not valid.
Nupan and Forest Top are now in dispute and Leamey and Roberts are locked in various legal battles over wide ranging allegations centred in the Philippines, where Roberts is under investigation by the Philippine immigration department.
"I want nothing to do with carbon credits and nothing to do with Kirk William Roberts," Leamey said.
Source: AAP Report by Ilya Gridneff, 16 July 2009
Isn't it amazing how the potential for apparently 'easy money' seems to draw a certain type of person like a moth to a candle? Carbon Trading and 'Carbon sinks' are just the latest in a modern list of cargo cults that nations are contemplating playing with while the real issues of poverty, education and turmoil go begging for resources.
In the PNG newspaper The National there is an article about how some PNG Members of parliament are using public funds to install telephone internet service providers instead of using the funds to repair and maintain schools and hospitals. It was conjectured that this makes it easy for those who have a TV or computer to watch Australian football matches. Pity the poor rural people who get no say in how the their country's resources are spent.
Mind you, I can remember when it was an ambition of all 'lain kuskus' to wear shorts and long socks so you could stick a pen down the side of one's leg, inside the sock, and the ultimate status symbol in the bush was a mere 'sotgan' irrespective of whether you could afford the ammunition or your kids schools fees.
So become a 'member' and you too can play in the game with big stakes these days. And one shouldn't look just at PNG. This appears to be a world wide phenomena.
Posted by: Paul Oates | 17 July 2009 at 11:33 AM
Thanks Keith for another wonderfully newsy and interesting edition which I have thoroughly enjoyed. Please keep up the good work.
Posted by: Joe Crainean | 17 July 2009 at 09:27 AM