missing

Nauru regains some of its missing millions

Nauru regained a small part of its missing millions of dollars in October.

The phosphate-rich island republic

had lost multi-millions in a failed London musical, in many bad real estate investments plus millions more to international swindlers (PlM August, 1993). In addition, one of its own employees, over a period of four years, systematically stole about Asl.2 mil lion, doing so from her position as an accountant for the Nauru Phosphate Trust in Melbourne.

But there was some good news for Nauru in the Country Court of Victoria on October 7. The accountant in ques tion, Corazon Ardern, pleaded guilty to 14 different counts of fiscal malfea sance, and agreed to make restitution of the A$ 1.2 million plus a nearly equal amount assessed against her in interest and costs.

Sources in Melbourne when asked if Ardern could make such a restitution said it appeared that she had not wast ed most of the money she had stolen from the Trust, and that she invested wisely in banks and in real estate.

Among these holdings was a “small mansion,” said to be worth about A 5730,000.

Court recessed for half an hour, we are told, so that Ardern’s lawyers and those of the Trust, could sign all the papers needed to transfer her bank accounts and deeds to the Trust.

Ardern was sentenced to serve 20 to 36 months in jail, with the exact term dependent on her behaviour there.

Presumably her agreement to spare the government the cost of a trial and her willingness to make the restitution

helped bring about the relatively light

sentence.

Although Nauru presumably will get a substantial amount of money—per haps even more than the amount origi nally stolen - the whole affair again reminded observers of Nauru’s well known inability, at least in the past, to manage its millions.

“There was a cash culture at the Trust, and a strong dislike and distrust of checking accounts, which made these thefts possible” we were told. ■