Another Australian company has come forth with serious...

Another Australian company has come forth with serious allegations in the Solomons. The Australian newspaper reports.....

A second Australian mining company has accused Solomon Islands’ government of corruption and the Morrison government of failing to stand up for its legal rights as Chinese rivals bribed their way into securing lucrative mining leases in the country. Pacific Bauxite chairman Peter Lewis told The Australian the company was forced to abandon its prospecting licence on the country’s Santa Cruz Island in 2021, wasting about $8m before it “threw in the towel”.“It is made known that if you pay the right people, you will get what you want,” Mr Lewis told The Australian.

“It is all about money. But we’re a public company. There’s no way in the world we could do anything like that. We wouldn’t want to. The culture has now permeated the whole country.”His comments come amid similar complaints by Australian nickel miner Axiom Mining, reported by The Australian, and Labor claims that the Coalition should have prevented Solomon Islands’ new security agreement with China.

Mr Lewis said the company’s Chinese rival Bintan – which was responsible for a devastating February 2019 oil spill cleaned up at Australian taxpayers’ expense – were “like a monster up there”.“They’re mysterious characters. They never respond to any communication. They just work the system,” he said.

China is inking a new security deal and wants assets in return.