THEFT OF £8740

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 23, 27 July 1945, Page 8

THEFT OF £8740

TWO MEN SENTENCED

AUCTION FUNDS CASE

A sentence of two and a half years imprisonment with hard labour wa imposed by the Chief Justice (Sii Michael Myers) in the Supreme Cour today on Lionel Clifford Nimmo, 36 auctioneer, and Clarence Haigh, 49 clerk, who had been 1 .found guilty o: theft as servants of £8740 from Towns end and Paul, Ltd. Addressing the Court, Mr. W. E Leicester said that for years the tw( men had . worked under a sense o: grievance as to their financial retun from the company. They felt tha they were receiving less than other; and that their talents were being exploited. Whether justified or not, suet feelings had served to lower their resistance to dishonesty. In the earij thirties, said counsel, an auctioneerini firm had been prosecuted for "buyini in," and his instructions were that the Bell account system was introduced tc overcome the difficulty, and that a: the years went by the ramifications 0: the system became a disguise for tlw same practices that had led to the prosecution of the other firm. His Honour said that counsel hac wanted to cross-examine some of tht witnesses on those matters, and h< had stopped him, because it Avas irrelevant in the present case, "but," hi; Honour continued, "I may say at once that enough was said to justify me ir saying that in some way or other the matter required investigation. Wha powers the Board of Trade may have I don't know, but there' should be ar investigation. More than that I neec not say, because if I did I might be doing someone an injustice, but I dc nobody any injustice when I . say knowing what happened in connectior with the case some 12 years ago, .that c proper investigation should be made into the practice we have heard something of, to ascertain whether or noi it is really honest and in conformity with the duties of a firm which has an auctioneer's licence and is selling goods on commission. It is all very well to talk about on-costs, but one would like to see what those on-costs really are\" Counsel said he was not there tc attack the firm, but simply, on behali of the prisoners, to point out that in that atmosphere of looseness of dealing, if not actual corrupt dealing, the prisoners had succumbed to temptation and devised a scheme for their own profit. "SYSTEMATIC THEFT." His Honour said that year after year for a period of eight years, month after month, week after week, and nearly every day during that period the two prisoners had stolen from their employers moneys of which they were in a sense trustees. It was a case of systematic theft. It was quite true that the jury had recommended them strongly to mercy, upon what ground he did not know, but it might well have been that one man had held out for an acquittal, and the other eleven had agreed to a recommendation to mercy as some sort of compromise, as it were. His Honour said that he would take the recommendation into account to some extent, but although Mr. Leicester had very properly said that he was not there to attack the firm and suggest they had been .dishonest, the two prisoners had not hesitated to make a threat that they would create an exposure and, to some extent—he did not say for a moment that Mr. Leicester had done anything he should not have done —that threat had been carried out. The case was very much like that of a defaulting solicitor, where it had been the practice for many years to impose a sentence of three years' imprisonment, said his Honour. Taking the recommendation into account, he would reduce the term in the present case by six months.