Employee charged with fraud, thievery

A FORMER employee of PNG Directories Ltd (PNG DL) was charged in the Waigani Committal Court with misappropriation, false pretence, conspiracy to defraud and stealing over K10,000 from the company.
Magistrate Danny Wakikura, last Wednesday, read out the charges to Philip Inu, 29, from Tamapua village in Namatanai, New Ireland, and remanded him.
“All these charges will go through a committal process which allows police to come up with a police file,” he said.
“My power is to assess the police file and defence submission and make a ruling.”
Police prosecutor Sgt Peter Samghy asked the court to impose a K3,000 bail amount for Inu as the offences were serious.
Police alleged that Inu, a former credit officer for the PNG DL, from March 11, 2019, to Aug 11, 2021, at the Telikom Rumana head office, had left the company knowing that he had been illegally collecting outstanding credits from PNG DL for unascertained period of time as the credit officer.
It was alleged that Inu had colluded with other PNG DL staff and fraudulently received an undisclosed amount of money from the company.
It was alleged that Inu had been asking PNG DL credit customers to pay credits into their own personal accounts.
This has been going on for some time until the first quarter of the year when company manager John Kupuni and finance and admin manager John Polup tracked Inu’s emails.
He was alleged to have received a total of K11,718.97 from Tower Insurance, Anglicare, Nau FM and others between March 31 to November 2021.
He was later arrested and interviewed by police where he admitted committing the offence.