Of the seventeen companies Pundari owns or jointly owns, only three, according to Investment Promotion Authority records, have ever filed their annual returns, as the table below illustrates.Įven where Annual Returns have been filed, there are reasonable grounds to question their accuracy. It is impossible to give an accurate assessment of the value of Pundari’s business interests as the information on the public record is woefully incomplete. John Pundari has also registered at least three business names – Millenium Guards, Millenium Transport and Electronic Security Systems. Until that time Pundari’s fellow directors included Doris Pundari and the infamous accountant, Rex Paki. The company was deregistered in October 2009. However, Pundari’s ownership cannot be ruled out as the IPA records are very deficient and do not reveal who the company’s owners were. PNGi has only found one company in which Pundari seems to have served as a director without also owning a share Salapkai Limited. Although Pundari sold his shares in October 2000, Tomuriesa continued as a director until the company ceased trading in 2006. Pundari owned 51% of the shares in Foxhaven between January and October 2000 a period which coincided with the appointment of Tomuriesa as one of only two directors. These now unregistered companies include Foxhaven No.17, which is notable for the involvement of the current Minister for Forests, Douglas Tomuriesa. NETWORK GRAPH: Pundari’s historical corporate ownerships
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A position he retained for the full term of the last Parliament and which he returned to after successfully contesting the 2017 election. Somare was ousted by Peter O’Neill in 2011, but after the 2012 election, Pundari sided with O’Neill and was rewarded with the Environment Ministry. He and Morauta then fell out again and Pundari resigned.įrom 2002 until 2007, as we have already noted, Pundari was out of Parliament following an unsuccessful bid for the Engan governorship.įollowing his re-election as an MP in 2007, Pundari became Minister for Mining in 2010, in the government of Prime Minister Michael Somare. Just months later though, Pundari was back in cabinet, serving as Minister for Lands from April to May 2001 and then Minister for Foreign Affairs from May until October 2001. Pundari was richly rewarded for his switch of allegiance from July until December 1999 he was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Women and Youth, before being sacked by Morauta. Pundari resigned as Speaker in July 1999 and then assisted Mekere Morauta to oust Skate and become Prime Minister. He was elected Speaker of the Parliament in 1997, a position he held for two-years under the controversial Prime Minister, William Skate. It was in his second term as an MP, following his re-election in 1997, that Pundari first achieved higher office. Five years later, 2007, Pundari was re-elected MP for Kompiam-Ambum, a seat he still holds. His only election defeat came in 2002, when he abandoned his local constituency and contested the Enga Provincial seat, where he lost out to Peter Ipitas. John Pundari has served as the MP for Kompiam-Ambum for twenty of the past twenty-five years. Since 1994, John Pundari has either owned or jointly owned more than 25 different companies and he has registered at least seven new businesses in just the last four years. High public office, diligently serving the people of Kompiam-Ambum as their Member of Parliament and the people of Papua New Guinea as a government Minister has not precluded Pundari from also pursuing a successful business career. Since then, Pundari has served as a Minister under four different Prime Ministers, has been Speaker of Parliament and, for a short period, Deputy PM. He first entered Parliament in June 1992, as the Member for Kompiam-Ambum in Enga Province. John Thomas Pundari was born on the 7th of January 1967. In this Profile, PNGi examines his career as both a politician and a businessman. Last year, 2017, John Pundari celebrated three significant milestones: his fiftieth birthday twenty-five years since his first election to Parliament and five years as Minister for the Environment, Conservation and Climate Change.