Paul Tiensten (born 1966) is a former Papua New Guinean politician and former National Alliance Member of Parliament for Pomio Open. Tiensten is currently serving a nine-year sentence for corruption. Tiensten holds a bachelor's degree from the

University of Papua New Guinea The University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) is a university located in Port Moresby, capital of Papua New Guinea. It was established by ordinance of the Australian administration in 1965. This followed the Currie Commission which had enquired ...

and a Masters in Resources Law at the Center for Energy, Petroleum, Mineral Law and Policy,

University of Dundee The University of Dundee is a public research university based in Dundee, Scotland. It was founded as a university college in 1881 with a donation from the prominent Baxter family of textile manufacturers. The institution was, for most of its ...

, Scotland. He served as a Director of Petroleum at the Department of Petroleum and Energy for the government of

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

and was also a Project Manager for the

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and Grant (money), grants to the governments of Least developed countries, low- and Developing country, middle-income countries for the purposes of economic development ...

funded Gas Development and Utilization Technical Assistance Project.

Political career

Tiensten was first elected to parliament in 2002 and was appointed as the Chairman of the Special Parliamentary Committee on Gas and Energy Development. He was later appointed Trade and Industry Minister on 12 November 2003 and served as

Minister of Foreign Affairs In many countries, the ministry of foreign affairs (abbreviated as MFA or MOFA) is the highest government department exclusively or primarily responsible for the state's foreign policy and foreign relations, relations, diplomacy, bilateralism, ...

from 2005 to 2007 under then

Prime Minister A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...

Michael Somare Sir Michael Thomas Somare (9 April 1936 – 25 February 2021) was a Papua New Guinean politician. Widely called the " father of the nation" (), he was the first Prime Minister after independence. At the time of his death, Somare was also the lo ...

. He was re-elected in 2007 for a second term of Parliament as Minister for National Planning and District Development, but lost his portfolio in August 2011 when a defection of MPs saw the government of

disbanded.

Controversy

Taiwan diplomatic scandal

In 2008, Singaporean businessman Wu Shih-tsa alleged in a Taiwanese court that six

officials, including Paul Tiensten, personally profited from a payment of A$19 million from

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

in a bid to strengthen diplomatic relations with

. Tiensten admitted to meeting the Taiwanese officials, but denied the allegations of corruption. Sam Koim, the chairman of the anti-corruption investigation team Task Force Sweep, announced in December 2011 that he may be investigating the Taiwan diplomatic scandal in early 2012.

Kikori misappropriation controversy

In January 2010 Minister for Labour and Industrial Relations, Mark Maipakai, who is the member of parliament for Kikori, alleged that the Office of the Minister for National Planning and District Development had been involved in a 220 million kina (US$81.4 million) fraud, together with four landowner associations in Kikori,

Gulf Province Gulf Province is a province of Papua New Guinea located on the southern coast. The provincial capital is Kerema. The 34,472 km2 province is dominated by mountains, lowland river deltas, and grassland flood plains. In Gulf Province, the Kiko ...

. The funds were intended for infrastructure projects in Kikori, including roads, houses and a hospital, but were never used for this purpose. Maipakai called on Paul Tiensten to explain why the funds were released by his office without proper project submission, status report, accounting or acquittals. Tiensten denied the allegations of fraud, explaining that the four landowner associations had signed the Benefits Sharing Agreement for the

Liquefied Natural Gas Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the volume o ...

project, and so the Government, in return, made the commitment to facilitate the release of infrastructure funds to them. Subsequently the chairman of one of the four landowner associations, the Kikori Gas Pipeline Landowner Association ( KGPLA), Mark Sarong, was arrested and charged with ten counts of misappropriation and ten counts of conspiracy. Sarong allegedly went behind the board of directors of the KGPLA and changed the signatories so that he could sign cashable cheques worth substantial amounts, including one cheque for K4 million. Tiensten, with the Minister of Finance, had authorised the release of 17.6 million kina S$6.6 millionto the KGPLA. The case against Sarong was struck out by the Waigani Committal Court in August 2010 due to a lack of a police brief.

Tiensten’s arrest amid corruption claims

In early November 2011, Tiensten was arrested by the government’s Investigation Task Force Sweep, a corruption investigation task force established by Prime Minister

Peter O'Neill Peter Charles Paire O'Neill (born 13 February 1965) is a Papua New Guinean politician who served as the seventh Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea from 2011 to 2019. He has been a Member of Parliament for Ialibu-Pangia since 2002. He was a fo ...

. The charges against Tiensten related to the misappropriation of funds, conspiracy to defraud the state and abuse of office, for his part in approving a PGK 10 million payment of air subsidies to the airline company Travel Air. It was alleged that Tiensten conspired with Travel Air's owner, businessman Eremas Wartoto, to make the payment while he was National Planning Minister, despite being aware that the company was inactive. Tiensten had initially fled to Australia in September 2011 when summoned for questioning by the Investigation Task Force Sweep, but was arrested in

upon his return in November. Tiensten was later arrested in November 2011 by the Investigation Task Force Sweep on three further charges for diverting PGK 3.4 million of government funding to Tolpot Services Ltd, of which he was both a shareholder and a director. In March 2014, he was convicted of misappropriation over 10 million kina, and sentenced to nine years of

hard labour Penal labour is a term for various kinds of forced labour that prisoners are required to perform, typically manual labour. The work may be light or hard, depending on the context. Forms of sentence involving penal labour have included inv ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tiensten, Paul 1966 births Living people Government ministers of Papua New Guinea Alumni of the University of Dundee Members of the National Parliament of Papua New Guinea People's United Assembly politicians University of Papua New Guinea alumni Politicians convicted of corruption Papua New Guinean prisoners and detainees Ministers for foreign affairs of Papua New Guinea