Sydney trader caught working from Singapore hotel wins case but gets no compensation

A Sydney currency dealer caught logging on from a Singapore hotel when he was meant to be working from home has won his unfair dismissal case but will receive no compensation.

Commissioner Alana Matheson of the Fair Work Commission ruled on Oct. 7 that HIFX Australia, which trades as currency exchange firm Xe, had a valid reason to sack Charles Graham in December 2025 but followed an unfair process, The Guardian reported.

Matheson declined to reinstate him or award compensation. She found a fair process would likely have kept him employed for four more weeks, worth A$5,384.62 (US$3,750), and noted Xe had already paid him A$5,384.61 in lieu of notice.

Apart from "a one cent difference that may result from a rounding issue, there is no loss," she wrote in the decision.

Graham, who was on a base salary of A$70,000, asked Xe in September 2025 to let him work from Singapore for up to a year on a youth mobility visa that required him to move by Nov. 14, 2025, the decision shows.

Xe refused, saying the role was based in Sydney and it did not have a license to operate in Singapore, The Straits Times reported. Graham denied the request had been refused, but the commission preferred his manager's evidence.

On Sept. 25, 2025, Graham scratched his cornea at work. In October he provided a medical certificate saying he needed to work from home for three months while using an eye ointment that affected his vision.

He flew to Singapore with his partner on Nov. 7, 2025, and took annual leave from Nov. 10 to 14.

On the morning of Nov. 17, his first day back, his manager, Abigail Plummer, messaged a member of Xe's IT team that "our mate should be online today, first day since his holiday so I will need your FBI skills," according to the decision.

Graham logged on at 9 a.m. Sydney time. By 9:45 a.m., the IT staffer had run a command on his work laptop and sent Plummer its GPS coordinates, and Matheson found he had logged on from an Ibis hotel in Singapore.

Minutes after logging on, Graham messaged colleagues to thank them for looking after his work while he was away and asked what he had missed, without mentioning where he was. Matheson found that had he meant to tell his manager, he would likely have done so before messaging colleagues about non-urgent matters.

Graham told the commission his partner developed a bacterial infection in Singapore, so they moved their flight home from Nov. 16 to Nov. 20. In his written response to Xe, he said hundreds of unread emails, incoming calls and a complaint from a high-value client took priority over telling his manager, The Guardian reported.

Xe fired him on Dec. 2, 2025. Its termination letter, quoted in the decision, said his flight screenshots did not show his name and he had provided no medical evidence that his partner was unable to travel.

"Your conduct represents a serious breach of company policy, a failure to follow lawful and reasonable instructions, and an irreparable breakdown of trust and confidence," the letter said.

Dishonest, but unfairly dismissed

Months earlier, Graham had told his manager he was working from home because he had a plumber "coming around to sort out some recurring bathroom issues," when he was in Bali, The Guardian reported.

Graham told the commission he had worked remotely from Bali in April and May 2025, and from Townsville in Queensland in 2024, without being reprimanded. Plummer said she had not known he had ever worked overseas.

Graham also argued that the company had located him through "illegal tracking surveillance" used without his knowledge. An IT staffer told the commission the company did not routinely monitor where employees were.

Matheson found the April 28, 2025, message from Bali showed Graham knew he needed approval to work from another country. "Approval to work from home within Australia was not approval to work remotely from another country," she wrote.

She found his failure to disclose his location before he was caught in Singapore "was deliberate and amounted to dishonesty."

But before firing him, Xe did not name the policies it said he had breached or clearly put to him that it considered him dishonest, Matheson found.

Xe also cited his late arrivals after it made office attendance mandatory three days a week, The Straits Times reported, but Matheson found it had not told him before the dismissal that it was relying on that history.

Internal messages also suggested Xe was intent on dismissing him before hearing his side, she found. When Asia-Pacific managing director Peter Lynar said IT would "have all the evidence required," Plummer replied that she needed to "sort strategy once IT confirm."

Plummer also told an HR colleague she would "give him a bit of hope to turn up to the meeting tomorrow," according to the decision.