A senior Palau politician has rejected accusations, levelled in a public statement by the United States Department of State, that he had accepted bribes from “government, business, and criminal interests from China”.
The US State Department on Tuesday barred Hokkons Baule, the president of the Pacific nation’s senate, and his family from entering the US, after accusing him of “involvement in significant corruption on behalf of China-based actors”.
State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott in a statement said Mr Baules had accepted bribes in exchange for “providing advocacy and support for government, business, and criminal interests from China”.
“His actions constituted significant corruption and adversely affected US interests in Palau,” Mr Pigott said, without elaborating further.
Mr Baules told the ABC the “US should be ashamed of themselves”.
“I am one of the strongest supporters of the United States government in Palau,” he said.
He said he supported Chinese businesses in Palau, but not corrupt or illegal businesses.
Mr Baules said he did not know what evidence the US accusations were based upon.
“If I have committed a crime then the United States [should] show the evidence to the government of Palau that I have committed a crime,” he said.
The US also banned a former Marshall Islands mayor, Anderson Jibas, from entering the US, accusing him in the same statement of stealing money meant to support communities affected by historic nuclear weapons testing.
Mr Jibas told the ABC the allegations were false.
In the statement, Mr Pigott said Mr Jibas had “abused his public position by orchestrating and financially benefiting from multiple misappropriation schemes involving theft, misuse, and abuse of funds from the US-provided Bikini Resettlement Trust (BRT).”
The BRT was an American fund provided to the Marshall Islands people to help with relocation, rehousing and health care, after US nuclear weapons testing in the 1940s and 1950s left the area uninhabitable.
Mr Pigott said Mr Jibas had “stolen” money meant to help the Kili, Bikini and Ejit communities affected by the nuclear contamination.
“The theft, misuse, and abuse of the US-provided money for the fund wasted US taxpayer money and contributed to a loss of jobs, food insecurity, migration to the United States,”
Mr Pigott said.
“The lack of accountability for Jibas’s acts of corruption has eroded public trust in the government of the Marshall Islands, creating an opportunity for malign foreign influence from China and others.”
Mr Jibas said that if the United States allegations were true, he would have been charged by Marshallese authorities.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” he said.
“That’s why the Marshall Islands government hasn’t done anything to me. We have auditing … that’s why there’s nothing happening to me in the Marshall Islands.”
The embassies of Palau and the Marshall Islands in Washington did not respond immediately to Reuters’ requests for comment.
The US government’s nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll have left the area uninhabitable. (Reuters: US Navy handout)
Palau and the Marshall Islands, two strategically positioned US-allied Pacific Island nations, have in recent years become a focus in an intensifying geopolitical contest between Washington and Beijing.
Both countries receive economic support from the US through their Compacts of Free Association (COFA) and in return Washington is responsible for their defence while gaining exclusive military access to strategic swathes of the Pacific.
But China, keen to make inroads in the region, has been wooing the financially strapped Pacific economies with development and economic opportunities.
Under his leadership, the Senate has passed resolutions criticising US military activity in Palau.
Palau and the Marshall Islands are among the few remaining states that maintain official diplomatic ties with Taiwan, the democratically governed island China claims as its territory.
In recent years, Palau officials have sought increased US patrols of its waters after incursions by Chinese vessels into its exclusive economic zone. Palau also hosts American-controlled airstrips and the US military is building advanced radar stations there.
Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands is home to a critical testing base for US missile defences.
ABC/Reuters
