As the autonomous region of Bougainville inches closer to achieving independence from Papua New Guinea, hopes for its economic development have been pinned on the vaunted relaunch of a gold and copper mine worth an estimated $160 billion.
An OCCRP investigation has now found Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama bypassed an official process and ignored warnings when he chose Lloyds Metals and Energy Ltd., a publicly traded Indian company with no background in major copper and gold extraction, to relaunch the mine.
Toroama also told OCCRP that several weeks before the deal was signed late last year, he accepted an extraordinary offer from Lloyds’ managing director Balasubramanian Prabhakaran: to fly the president’s wife to India for a lifesaving kidney transplant, at no apparent cost. An employee of the clinic where the operation took place told OCCRP that Lloyds paid for the procedure.
Toroama said that the apparent gift, which he had not shared publicly, did not influence his decision.
His pick of Lloyds has already generated controversy among some on the island, and some concerns renewed tensions over the Panguna mine — once a flashpoint in Bougainville’s civil war — could put the region’s independence bid at risk.
The mine is the region’s only potential major money earner, and any problems with its reopening could lead to instability.
“The whole thing is fraught with hazard,” said Paul Barker, executive director of the Institute of National Affairs, a think tank in Papua New Guinea, and an expert on foreign investment and transparency.
While Lloyds is “not a shrimp,” he said the company’s relatively smaller size and lower level of experience compared to competitors heighten the chance that things could go wrong.
“Suddenly you’ve got a new player on the board that doesn’t really have a copper and gold background, it does add to the risks.”
