A High Court judge has dismissed a major civil claim brought by Hansons Investments (Fiji) Pte Ltd against nine former employees accused of embezzling more than $223,000 from the company’s Makoi and Nabua Total service stations, ruling that the key forensic evidence was unreliable and legally inadmissible.
Justice Deepthi Amaratunga, delivering judgment on 18 November 2025, found that the plaintiffs failed to prove the authenticity and integrity of the Excel-based sales “extracts” that formed the backbone of their case.
“There was no evidence as to the manner in which electronic evidence was obtained… and no evidence as to how data was transferred to Excel Summaries without compromising authenticity and reliability,” the judge said.
Hansons Investments had alleged that cashiers and managers working between 2017 and 2019 used sophisticated methods to bypass the Infinity point-of-sale system, including mid-shift ID switching, premature printing of daily sales reports, and disconnecting terminals to hide transactions.
The company claimed the nine defendants—most of them cashiers—systematically understated their shift-end cash figures.
The alleged shortfalls ranged from $4,488 to over $136,000 per person.
The judge noted that the system-generated documents—DL reports, reconciliations, and handwritten shift sheets—matched each other and showed no discrepancies.
Without the Excel summaries, the plaintiffs had “no reliable basis” to establish that any money had been misappropriated.
On that basis, the court struck out Hansons Investments’ entire claim against all nine defendants.
