[9] Paladin's contract for Manus Island ended on 30 November 2019, they aimed for an orderly transition to a PNG company to provide care and maintenance at the ELRTC facility.
[citation needed] In total, Paladin received $532 million from the Australian Government for garrison services on Manus Island from September 2017 to November 2019.
[10] In April 2019, the company's website stated they employed 4,500 local nationals across the Asia-Pacific, including in Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Singapore.
[11] Paladin also increased the shareholding of Peren, the local landowning group, to make it a fifty-fifty partnership as per the terms of an MoU that was signed in 2014.
[12] Prior to being awarded the large contract, Paladin's work included being a subcontractor providing security at East Lorengau Refugee Transit Centre on Manus Island, which housed 60 people.
[13] In July 2019 Paladin sponsored an initiative by Australia-based not-for-profit Screens Without Borders to bring cinema back to Manus Island after forty years.
In April 2019, the website listed the following subsidiaries in various countries:[3] Australia: Papua New Guinea: Singapore: Timor Leste: Paladin also had a holding company registered in Hong Kong[16] since 2013.
[23] Paladin argued that Stewart was entitled to nothing, and alleged the document he relied upon for his claim was a forgery, but failed in a bid to stop the matter from continuing.
[5] Paladin were awarded the Australian Government contract by the Department of Home Affairs without an open tender process,[2] which suggests they were the only company invited to bid.
The Department of Home Affairs stated that it had previously run a closed tender but attracted little response partly because larger companies didn't want the "noise".
[citation needed] The company's former chief executive in PNG, Craig Coleman, was suing Paladin in February 2019 claiming breach of contract and that employees were sent to Manus under misleading pretences.
Paladin entered into a contract with Peren Solutions, a company with links to the family of Job Pomat, deputy leader of the ruling People's National Congress Party, speaker of the PNG Parliament, and key ally of Prime Minister Peter O'Neill.
[citation needed] In 2019, the Australian High Commission in PNG received a report of alleged attempted bribery involving Paladin.
In January 2020, the Department of Home Affairs had not referred the allegations to the Australian Federal Police, which is the common course of action in foreign bribery cases.
[36] In May 2020 the Auditor General's report was released, with the following findings:[10] Thrupp allegedly transferred $1.2 million dollars to his mother who worked at Home Affairs.