COLLEGE ROBBED

Hokitika Guardian, 24 September 1932, Page 5

COLLEGE ROBBED

BY ITS CHAIRMAN OF HALF MILLION DOLLARS (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) - WINNIPEG, September 22. John A. Machray, K.C., churchman, lawyer! and financier, aged 67, suffering from cancer, was sentenced to sever years’ imprisonment on each ot two charges .of theft to-day, the sentences to f run concurrently, by the Magistrate in the Provincial Police Court, after lie elected for summary trial, in which he pleaded guilty to stealing 500,000 dollars from the University of Manitoba, of which he had been Bursar and Chairman of the Beard of Governors, (the charge being altered from 901,175 dollars by agreement between counsel) and 60,000 from a former law partner, Herbert Archibald.

Machray was also Chancellor of the Church of England Diocese of Rupertsland, which has-suffered losses on funds in Machray’s custody placed at 860,000 dollars, but it is believed that no charges will be laid in this connection.

To-day,, the investment and legal business of Machray and Sharpe was declared bankrupt by Chief Justice D. A. MacDonald, over the protest of F. J. Sharpe, the junior partner, who claimed that he knew nothing of the oor.dition of the University funds. Machray was taken to the provincial gaol, where he will remain for ‘thirty days, before going to the peniteniary. Any appeal for leniency on the grounds of illness must go, to the Minister of Justice at Ottawa.

Machray’s counsel, Mr A. E. Hoskins, K.C., in a statement in Court, said that in pleading guilty, Machray was not admitting theft in the common or ordinary sense of the word, but under the criminal code certain acts were made criminal under the heading of theft.