ISLAND FRUIT

Hokitika Guardian, 23 October 1930, Page 8

ISLAND FRUIT

ACCUSATION AGAINST AUCTIONEERS.

HEARING CONTINUED

WELLINGTON, October 20

Some critical remarks concerning the Government Audit Department were made m the Alagistrate’s Court to-day by Air Ii- F. Johnston, K.C., at the resumed hearing of the case in which Laery and Co., Ltd., auctioneers and produce merchants, of AVellington, were charged on five counts of failing to disclose a pecuniary interest in a contract and on two counts of delivering false sales accounts to the Department of External Affairs.

Air E. Page, S.M., presided. Air Macassey, Crown Prosecutor conducted the case for the police,, and Air Stevenson assisted Air Johnston for the de- . fnce.

“This is a case, of very great importance to the defendant company, because the crime involved is one_ of first-class importance, having as the penalty in the event off an individual being charged a term of imprisonment,’' said Mr Johnston. The peculiar way in. which the case had been presented to the Court bad left it to the defence to bring to the mind of the Court what the crimes alleged were meant to be. Neither had the prosecution taken the trouble to give any real evidence of the contract which was allegedly made by the Crown with the defendant company or of where the terms of that contract had been departed from. “There are two Departments concerned, and what can only be described as the bureaucrateic arrogance of the Audit Department, which is entirely dissociated ffrom business of any description, and apparently lias no business knowledge, has led it to impose on the External Affairs Department which was doing tli6 trade, a bureaucratic ignorance of business which, if it were true, would be an abyssmal and the strongest possible indictment of a Government entering into trade at all.”

There was a conflict of evidence between Mr .Smith, of the Department of External Affairs, and Mr Scott, of the Audit Department. It was not clear to whom the bananas belonged, 'ihe Court was entitled to consider whether the custom of “buying in” by its general practice was reasonable and honest. The prosecution had kept from the Court that the custom was universal. The prosecution had had to admit in cross-examination that the custom was known to it. The statement put in by Mr Scott in support of the charges was crude and childish, and iff it were circulated as the general method of the Audit Department in ascertaining a company’s profits it would be laughed at and ridiculed by the whole of the people of New Zealand. Regarding the charges against the company, when a practice was known it was not a .secret.