The wet, cyclonic season is truly here for most of Melanesia, the region known politically as the “arc of instability”.
In such weather, no one wants to do his washing, let alone air them, as there will be little or no sunshine at all.
But despite the wet weather, one government has decided to do just that: air the dirty linen in the wheeling and dealings behind a business deal that went sour in the Solomon Islands.
Prime Minister Dr Derek Sikua’s government has set up a commission of inquiry to expose the behind-the-scene wheeling and dealing that in a way contributed to the undoing of foreign businessman, Patrick Wong’s bid to take over Solomon Islands’ Russell Islands Plantation Estates Ltd [RIPEL], once regarded the nation’s jewel of the crown.
At the same time, the government has set up a top legal team which will be fighting various aspects of the business deal.
Wong is now suing RIPEL shareholders including the Solomon Islands Government for US$6 million.

The deal
The deal to sell RIPEL was struck in 2002 when Wong, formerly of Malaysia, made his bid.
RIPEL, formed at least two years earlier, was intended to take over the large operations of coconut and cocoa plantations as well as cattle on Guadalcanal and Russell Islands in the nation’s Central Province.
It was not to be. Shortly after all the fanfare, RIPEL went into liquidation. A scheme of arrangement hastily put together subsequently got the nod from the nation’s highest court, the High Court of Solomon Islands.
That arrangement is likely to be the subject of focus for a top legal team which the Solomon Islands Government has approved.
The country’s deputy Attorney-General will head the team which, among other things, will examine whether the scheme of arrangement is consistent with other domestic laws, including the Companies Act.
The team will take the government’s argument before the very court that sanctioned the scheme. Aspects of the shareholders agreement would also come under the spotlight.
Written in the shareholders agreement which forms part of the scheme is the distribution of RIPEL’s shares amongst five shareholders.
For example, Wong’s group owns 15.1 percent. Despite being the least shareholder, Wong, who now claims Australian citizenship, has virtual control of RIPEL.
He is, for example, chairman, has more directors on the board with voting rights as well as the power of veto over any board decision—all these are written into the shareholders agreement.
The government’s legal team will be asking the High Court to see whether the shareholders were compromised or coerced into accepting the shareholders agreement.
Both the commission of inquiry and the legal team will be conducted simultaneously.
Retired High Court Judge, Frank Kabui, has been hand-picked by cabinet to head the three-man [all male] inquiry team.
Kabui, who is the chairman of the Constitutional Review Commission, will be assisted by Brian Brunton of Papua New Guinea and Gabriel Taloikwai, a former head of the Solomon Islands College of Higher Education [SICHE].
Deputy Prime Minister, Fred Fono, confirmed that cabinet decided these measures in November following a paper based on recommendations by an earlier government taskforce which looked into the RIPEL case.
“Yes, cabinet has approved a commission of inquiry,” Fono said.
The Kabui Inquiry will call witnesses in hearings expected to take at least two months.
As this edition went to press, the inquiry’s terms of reference were being put together jointly by the Office of the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General’s Chamber.
“The general feeling is that the inquiry should be over within two months or so,” Fono said in Brisbane in recently.

Inquiry costly, intriguing
While Fono did not say too much, he did confirm, however, that both the inquiry and the court challenge mounted by the government’s legal team would be conducted simultaneously.
The idea of a legal team revisiting the RIPEL’s shareholders agreement and the High Court-sanctioned scheme of arrangement is to ensure a closure to the long running RIPEL saga.
Quietly, the government wants RIPEL back because of its significance to the nation’s economy. In its heyday, RIPEL with large landholdings and other assets, now valued at $1.5 billion, was a major foreign exchange earner for the government.
If it wins the case, the government wants to put RIPEL on international tender.
But the commission of inquiry is shaping up to be a costly and intriguing exercise. Wong has a way of exploiting legal loopholes as he did in the Australian Federal Court in Sydney in 2005.
There, he scored a victory of sorts when a German company, Walter Rau, decided against pursuing its case over two copra consignments from RIPEL which Cross Pacific Trading Ltd [CPT] and Pacific Finance Ltd [PFL] sold to the German merchant.
CPT, said to be a non-registered company at the time and PFL are jointly owned by Wong and a Van Vlymen.
How the linens got dirtied are expected to be flying, rain or shine, when the inquiry starts.
For example, John Whiteside, a Fijian Wong hand-picked to run the RIPEL operations has made startling allegations publicly against a number of senior government ministers.
However one looks at it, the Commission of Inquiry certainly has a lot of dirty linen to sort out and certainly has the potential for sparks to fly.