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Nauru

Nauru conned again

Nauru’s vulnerability to financial mismanagement was under lined again recently when it became known that a Melbourne based employee of the Republic of Nauru has been charged with swindling the nation of an estimated AS 1,500,000.

Earlier this year Nauru was taken for millions of dollars by conmen dealing in phoney financial instruments, as well as losing other large sums on the Japanese stock market, on the London stage, and in various real estate ventures (PIM August, 1993).

The accused, Corazon Ardern, a Filipina, had been employed as the chief accountant at Nauru’s office in its Melbourne skyscraper, Nauru House. According to Senior Detective Michael Scott Goddard of the Victoria police, the financial records she maintained were a shambles of bits and pieces of paper; he reportedly estimated that it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to recreate the financial records of the organisation, and to determine exactly what was done did with the missing funds. Although Ardern has been indicted, no trial date has been set, because she lacks a lawyer.

One of the reasons she does not have a lawyer is because Australian authorities have frozen her bank accounts until the charges are resolved. Police authorities in Victoria say that in circumstances like this inside swindlers can flourish only if the supervision is lax.

Nauru’s chief administrative officer in Melbourne, Edwin McPhail, confirmed to PIM that Ardern had worked for Nauru, but said that he would not respond to written questions, only to faxed ones. He did not respond to those either.