No error found in ruling

By BEVERLY PETER
THE Supreme Court has found no error of law in the conviction of former acting Securities Commission chairman and Registrar of Companies, Alex Tongayu.
Justice Vergil Narakobi said on behalf of Justices John Kaumi and Sir Kina Bona that they saw no error in the National Court decision that convicted Tongayu on two counts of forgery.
“We found no fault in the assessment of the evidence and the conviction was safe,” he said. Justice Narakobi said this in Waigani yesterday when ruling on an application by Tongayu to review his conviction.
Tongayu was found guilty of two counts of forgery and jailed to three years in prison by the National Court in 2021.
Tongayu had filed applications to review both his conviction and sentence but made submissions only against his conviction during the hearing.
His grounds for appeal were that the National Court had erred in law by convicting him without direct evidence to prove the forgery charge as it was committed electronically.
Tongayu further claimed that the court was wrong for accepting the evidence of the handwriting expert when the State did not provide evidence of the original signatories of the Trade and Commerce Minister Richard Maru to compare with the alleged forged signatories.
The bench ruled that there was no error by the trial judge’s conviction of Tongayu on two counts of forgery contrary to section 462(1) of the Criminal Code Act on the bases that there was a rational implication of guilt in all the circumstances.
“We find that the trial judge correctly determined how the document was produced,” Justice Narakobi added.
He said that the three-man Supreme Court bench had found no error by the trial judge in the analysis of the evidence to reach the conclusion on conviction.