PNG minister arrested in Sydney over assault on woman

Controversial PNG petroleum minister Jimmy Maladina has stepped aside from his portfolio after being charged with assaulting a 31-year-old woman in Bondi.

Papua New Guinea petroleum minister Jimmy Maladina.

Papua New Guinea petroleum minister Jimmy Maladina has stepped aside from his portfolio after he allegedly assaulted a 31-year-old woman in Bondi, a development that comes as the controversial MP was negotiating a crucial $15bn LNG deal for his country.

The 58-year-old was charged with a domestic assault offence after police were called to an address on Imperial Ave in Bondi on Saturday morning and discovered the woman with facial injuries, allegedly as a result of an altercation with Mr Maladina.

Police said the pair were known to each other.

Mr Maladina was arrested and taken to Waverley Police Station, where he was charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm. He was granted conditional bail to appear in Waverley Local Court on July 11.

On Sunday Mr Maladina issued a statement saying he had advised Prime Minister James Marape that he was stepping aside as minister for petroleum and caretaker minister for energy following “an altercation” over the weekend.

The influential politician and businessman said: “I will make the general point that violence perpetrated by either a man, or violence by a woman, cannot be tolerated”.

“I have faith in the Australian judiciary to hear this matter in an independent and objective manner.

“I further thank the New South Wales Police officers who attended to this matter for the professional way in which they conducted their duties, and they have a process to follow in these matters.

“We will all have our day in court and I look forward to the facts of the matter being presented.”

Mr Maladina spent three years living in Brisbane in the early 2000s after having his passport confiscated during a long-running dispute over PNG’s superannuation scheme, the National Provident Fund (NPF), of which he was chairman.

In a 2005 case in which he was charged with conspiracy to defraud the NPF, Mr Maladina was described by the judge as “the manipulative member of the conspiratorial criminal cabal, the one person, in a classic ‘chain conspiracy’ who “called the shots”, as it were.”

Mr Maladina was convicted by PNG’s National Court in 2015 of misappropriation and conspiring to defraud the fund of $US963,000 but his conviction was later overturned by the Supreme Court.

The former lawyer, elected only in 2022, is a prominent adviser to Prime Minister Marape, and was in charge of negotiations over a crucial $15bn liquefied natural gas project in PNG.

Earlier this year Mr Maladina brushed aside claims that the long-delayed LNG project was struggling to secure funding from Australian and European banks, claiming he had assurances from French energy partner TotalEnergies that the deal was on track.

But a final investment decision and the drilling of the first deepwater exploration well have now been delayed until at least next year. The project would extract gas from the country’s remote Gulf Province and send it along a 340 km pipeline to Port Moresby for export.

The project is regarded as pivotal to PNG’s economy, with petroleum gas constituting about half the country’s annual export activity.