MF hands out 771 million Kina as our country’s Corruption Watchdog ICAC collapses
Following the end of the second world war, global leaders gathered and established a framework of institutions including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to build a more equitable and just future for all. To help all nations and their people prosper not just a few. The endeavour was noble.
Seventy-five years on and the IMF’s noble goals has morphed into it being the global lender of last resort. The IMF is who countries on their last legs turn to as with the big loans comes big shackles binding the borrower to conditions that are unable to be deviated from until the loans are repaid.
PNG has been a member of the IMF since 1975 and willingly participated in monitoring and evaluation but wisely, successive governments preferred to maintain very conservative levels of public debt to GDP of no more than 35% and to steer away from highly conditional loans from the IMF.
From 1975 to 2001, a total of US$163m was borrowed by PNG from the IMF. During the period 2001 to 2022, no money was borrowed from the IMF and no office of the IMF existed in PNG.
Perhaps it is just a coincidence but since massive corruption and election rigging has taken hold in our country, since 2020, PNG has borrowed over four and a half billion Kina (K4.58 billion) from the IMF.
These are not grant funds but debts to be repaid back. Loans our children will be responsible for long after all the current MPs are dead and gone.
The IMF tied each of the loans since 2020 to good governance including mandating the establishment of the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption (ICAC).
In every report completed by IMF staff and endorsed by the IMF Board in Washington, D.C. the IMF states that the PNG Government is progressing well with reforms to counteract corruption and therefore agreed to borrowing requests made by Marape and Ling-Stuckey.
In June 2025 the IMF reported that ICAC was operating well and handed out seven hundred and seventy million Kina to PNGs dodgy Government.
Fifteen million Papua New Guineans know very differently. We all know this Marape led government is rotten to its core. The IMF now has a fulltime office in Port Moresby, it surely must also know this government is not only rotten but has lost the trust and confidence of its people.
A simple google search by the IMF would tell it that the Chief Commissioner of ICAC, a no-name
private lawyer from Brisbane was unqualified for the job. How did he come to rise to such an important role we are not to know but it’s clear he has made a mess of it in record time?
In June as the IMF disbursed nearly three quarters of a billion Kina into the hands of Marape and Ling-Stuckey, ICAC was in turmoil and not functioning.
How could the IMF let the people of PNG down so badly?
Surely the sensible thing to have done would have been to withhold funding until Marape got his house in order and re-established a truly independent ICAC.
Instead, the IMF chose exactly that moment to provide another massive injection of cash into the corrupt public purse where the winners are a select few cronies, and 15 million Papua New Guineans continue to go without basic medicines and essential government services.
I call on the shareholders of the IMF, including Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, our Pacific Island neighbours and China, to demand accountability from the IMF.
We are not stupid. I and my 15 million plus countrymen and women know the sinister and shameful deeds that are going on behind closed doors in Waigani and Washington D.C. to cripple our young country under this tyrannical regime.
Mark my words, the people of PNG will only stay respectful and silent for so long until we have had enough and demand real change.
Hon. Peter O’Neill, CMG, MP
Member for Ialibu-Pangia
Leader, People’s National Congress Party
Sources:
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