A convicted hotel pay supervisor has been forced to surrender her passport as part of her bail conditions.
Her name has to be recorded on the no fly list.
Selemana Fonua, 40, was prevented from leaving Tongatapu without a court permission.
She must report to the Nuku’alofa Central Police Station fortnightly between the hours of 10am and 5pm commencing on Friday 20 April 2018.
She is to provide two sureties in the sum of T$500 and must also provide her bond in the sum of T$I,OOO to secure her surrender to custody.
As Kaniva News reported last month, Fonua had been jailed for two years after she stole $21,299. 00 pa’anga over a seven-month period while she was an employee of the hotel when she was 38.
She had dishonestly manufactured a false spreadsheet which included the names of a number of fictitious or “ghost” employees thereby inflating the wages bill for Tanoa (Tonga).
Fonua has appealed her conviction challenging the decision made by Justice Cato.
She argued Mr. Cato wrongly accepted spreadsheets as secondary evidence of the originals in reliance upon section 64(b) of the Evidence Act.
But the Court of Appeal President Lord Chief Justice Paulsen believed the argument is not strong.
“The counter argument is that the ‘original’ documents for the purposes of section 64(b) are the ones created on and printed from the appellant’s computer. Viewed in this way the spreadsheets produced at the trial were indeed copies made by a mechanical process (printing from the computer) and would almost certainly have been accurate copies,” Mr. Paulsen said.
“I am satisfied that the grounds for granting bail in s 4B(1)(b) and (c) of the Bail Act are made out. By consent the appellant is granted bail pending the hearing of her appeal.”
