The former police commissioner of Papua New Guinea is facing five years in jail after being convicted of failing to act on an arrest warrant for the country’s prime minister.
A court has been told Geoffrey Vaki wilfully disobeyed when he refused to arrest the prime minister, Peter O’Neill, in June last year after a PNG anti-corruption taskforce, Sweep, linked him to allegedly fraudulent multimillion-dollar payments by the government to a Port Moresby law firm.
O’Neill has long denied the accusation.
After the 2014 arrest warrant was issued, O’Neill refused to present himself for questioning then sacked numerous law enforcement and government officials, including the attorney general and police commissioner, Tom Kalunga, who had signed off on the warrant.
In a move described by police unions at the time as highly suspicious, Kalunga was replaced with Geoffrey Vaki, who then delayed acting on the warrant, saying the case needed further investigation.
Within days Vaki was arrested by two senior police officers for attempting to pervert the course of justice after it emerged he and the new attorney general had appointed a new police lawyer and instructed him to agree to O’Neill’s request for a stay of the warrant.
He later held a press conference telling the media he wanted to wait until the investigation was “water tight” and any arrest would be “a long way down the road”, the ABC reported.
O’Neill was never arrested and won an injunction while he challenged the warrant in a separate court case.
On Wednesday Vaki was convicted of contempt for not acting on the warrant.
In his ruling, the chief justice, Sir Salamo Injia, said Vaki’s conduct “presented a real risk of interference with the due administration of justice or interfered with the due administration of justice”.
Injia said he was satisfied Vaki’s disobedience “brought public respect for the justice system into question and disrepute and undermined the rule of law”.
Vaki was sacked from the police commissioner role in May after reports of police brutality and delays in investigating a January police shooting.
While the warrant of arrest for O’Neill remains subject to the injunction, Wednesday’s ruling means it is still “valid for all intents and purposes”, according to the head of the Sweep taskforce, Sam Koim.
“The case has been meticulously analysed and addressed … and the court ruled that the warrant of arrest was a court order and that court order is not defective,” he told Guardian Australia.
In July last year the national court permanently stayed an order by the PNG parliament to disband Sweep, but the anti-corruption body – which was launched by O’Neill – was defunded instead.
“[The taskforce] exists by operational court order, it exists legally,” Koim said. “But for operational effectiveness we need funding and that funding has not been forthcoming.
“It is a political decision not to fund us but it’s also a decision that is personal in nature. It is not a decision isolated from the arrest warrant we recommended against the prime minister. It’s a position triggered by the arrest warrant.”
Vaki faces sentencing next Thursday and Koim said the prosecutors and the taskforce were pushing for a jail term of five years, but the decision was for the court.
O’Neill’s office has been contacted for comment.
