Kun being investigated over fatal accident

YAREN – The Nauru government says the suspended opposition MP Roland Kun is being investigated for his alleged role in an historic fatal accident.

In a statement it says Kun was allegedly drunk behind the wheel of a car that killed a motorcyclist in 1991.

The Justice Minister David Adeang says the government had kept the investigation confidential to protect the privacy of the victim’s family but it has decided to go public following the family’s push for justice and a signed affidavit from a witness in the vehicle.

Adeang says the matter was never investigated due to both Kun and his father being in political office and having much political influence over the past two decades.

Following the accident an inquiry was held but no witnesses were called, and it did not progress to the Supreme Court.

Kun who has had his passport suspended is among opposition MPs at the centre of a dispute between Nauru and New Zealand.

New Zealand cut aid to Nauru’s justice sector following concerns about rule of law and human rights in Nauru and the treatment of the MPs who have been protesting against their suspension from parliament.

“The Waqa Government was overwhelmingly elected to stop decades of corruption and cronyism, and this incident involving Roland Kun is an example of this,” Adeang said.

Adeang went on to say recent criticism of himself and the President Baron Waqa was a smokescreen for a corrupt legal system overseen by the opposition MPs and their legal friends. “Sadly the media have been fooled,” he said.

“This is one reason Mr Kun is not being allowed to leave the country, and the recent riot and attempted overthrow of the democratically elected Government of Nauru is another.”

Adeang has launched a scathing attack on New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully.

He told the Nauru Parliament that the aid suspension by New Zealand has nothing to do with concerns about the rule of law, justice or the judiciary.

He said McCully is only interested in one person, Roland Kun.

Adeang says earlier this month he met with McCully after being “hunted and harassed by him” around the Pacific Islands Forum summit in Port Moresby.

He says McCully told him it is wrong to hold Kun if he has not been charged.

A fellow Nauru cabinet minister, Charmaine Scotty, added McCully and the New Zealand government had been “prodded into taking action” by Kun’s wife, who is an Australian lawyer living and working in Wellington.