Court orders payment of K9000 in 8 months

A MAN in East New Britain has been ordered by the Kokopo National Court to repay K9000 belonging to Oceanic Communications PNG Ltd within eight months.
John Watangia was charged with and found guilty of misappropriating K9000 in 2015.
He was sentenced to three years in prison but the court placed him on good behaviour bond and told him to repay the money.
The court found that between the months of July and September 2015, the prisoner was employed by Oceanic Communications PNG Ltd in Kokopo where he was overseeing and was in charge of stock controlling, dispatching and sales of Digicel PNG products under a contract Oceanic Communication PNG Ltd had entered with Digicel PNG.
On Aug 13, 2015, the company’s operations manager Raj Pravin conducted a full audit of the stock items on cell phones, flex cards, SIM cards and other items. Another audit was conducted by the ground manager at Kokopo office.
Both audits revealed that K10,300 in cash, pre-paid SIM cards and phones valued at K6814 were missing. On Aug 28, 2015, the prisoner in a deceitful way took K9000 from K20,362.50 that was going to be deposited in the bank by another company employee.
He admitted using that amount to repay the money that was found missing following the audit instead of using his own funds.
Acting Justice David Susame told the prisoner there was a high degree of trust expected of him and he committed the offence because he did not want to be blamed for the variance and shortfalls discovered in the audit reports by his employer.