Just two months before Solomon Islands went to the polls this year, the president of the Pacific island country’s leading coalition party and the son of its then-prime minister set up a mysterious offshore shell company in Singapore in tandem with a Chinese partner, OCCRP member center In-depth Solomons reported Friday.
The company, OUR International Development Fund Pte Ltd, bears a name strikingly similar to the OUR Party founded by the then prime minister and current finance minister, Manasseh Sogavare. It was set up in February with 100,000 Singapore dollars (US$74,211) in capital, according to the documents from Singapore’s company registry.
The company was set up with 40 percent of the shares belonging to Sogavare’s son, Brandt, and 40 percent belonging to OUR Party President and Solomon Islands Police Minister Jimson Fiau Tanangada.
The remaining 20 percent is owned by a 30-year-old Chinese citizen, Pan Jinglin. However, reporters were unable to verify Pan’s identity or reach him for comment.
Both Brandt Sogavare and Tanangada are listed in the Singapore registry at separate home addresses in the city of Foshan, in China’s Guangdong province. Pan is listed as living in a small fishing village on Guangdong’s southern coast.
It is unclear what purpose the company serves. A reporter who visited OUR International Development Fund’s listed address in Singapore’s Bugis neighborhood found an unmarked office with a closed door under which mail had been stuffed.
Nearby tenants said they were unsure if the room was occupied.
Tanangada confirmed the existence of the Singapore company to In-depth Solomons, but said that it has “no affiliation” with OUR Party.
“Yes, the names may sound similar but that does not mean they are linked,” Tanangada said, adding that the company is a private venture.
Tanangada declined to answer what sort of business the company is engaged in, but said it had not yet begun trading.
The minister also refused to provide details about Pan’s identity, other than to say that his “parents run a business and lived in the Solomons.”
Tanangada said he traveled to China at Pan’s invitation several months before OUR International Fund Pte Ltd was registered in Singapore.
“It was in China that we filled up the business registration forms. This is where I got the Chinese address on the business registry,” Tanangada said.
“After filling up the forms, I returned home. The actual registration was done by Pan.”
Records from Solomon Islands shed little extra light on Pan’s background.
Publicly-available filings from Solomon Islands’ company registry show that a person by the name Pan Jinglin established a Honiara company called Solomon Island Pacsafe Ltd in 2019. The company has since been dissolved.
However, when a reporter called the local number listed for Pan with the registry, the call was answered by Cynthia Rimon, a resident of West Honiara.
Rimon said that she had never heard of Pan and that no one else was using her phone number at the time Solomon Island Pacsafe was registered.
The person listed as Pacsafe’s local business agent, Sisifa Fa’arodo, also said she had no idea who Pan was.
Fa’arodo said she had not set up the company, and that someone else may have used her name to register it.
Reporters were unable to contact Brandt Sogavare, 23, who has lived and studied in China on a scholarship since 2019.
However, his father, Manasseh Sogavare, said he believed his son was lured into signing up to something he knew little or nothing about.
“I’ve called Brandt and instructed him to immediately get out of this company,” Sogavare told In-depth Solomons.
He said OUR Party, which he founded and currently leads in parliament, was never part of any discussions on the formation of OUR International Development Fund Ltd.
“Jimson (Tanangada) did mention setting up a company in Singapore to me,” Sogavare said.
Tanangada was named Solomon Islands’ police minister in May this year after reclaiming the Gizo-Kolombangara seat in the country’s Western Province, which he lost in an election petition case in 2017.
Previous reporting shows that he has visited China on at least four occasions since 2023: twice as an official working in the Prime Minister’s Office and twice as Minister for Police and National Security.
Under OUR Party-led coalition rule, Solomon Islands has drawn closer to China and signed a secretive policing pact with Beijing in 2022, causing alarm in Western countries.
Tanangada’s current role makes him a key figure in the China-Solomons relationship.
Opposition Leader Matthew Wale said he believed Tanangada was not being truthful about the purpose of the Singapore company, OUR International Development Fund Ltd.
“Tanangada knows it'll be hard to prove him wrong,” Wale said.
“Why would he put Sogavare’s son as a shareholder? And why name the company ‘OUR’?”