HATRY FOUR IN COURT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 786, 5 October 1929, Page 11

HATRY FOUR IN COURT

PROSECUTOR’S CHARGE CONFIRMED ISSUE OF VALUELESS SCRIP (United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) Australian and N.Z. Press Association Reed. 9.20 a.m. LONDON, Friday. Clarence Hatry and his three associates, Edmund Daniels, John G. Dixon and A. E. Tabor, were again brought before the court today. Sir George Prescott was on the Bench. Mr. Page, chief clerk of the Issue Department of the Coroporation of General Securities, Limited, gave evidence bearing out the statements made last Friday by the prosecuting counsel, Mr. Henry D. Roome, regarding the printing of scrip certificates. The accused were again remanded. Bail was refused. Mr. Roome, who is third senior prosecuting counsel to the Crow'n at the Central Criminal - Court, said at the hearing last Friday, that six months after the Wakefield loan was issued, the defendants committed a shocking fraud. On July 15, Daniels ordered the firm of Blades, East and Blades, who had printed the Wakefield loan scrip certificate, to print a further 80 Wakefield certificates for £5,000 each, and deliver them to Dixon, not to Mr. Page, the chief clerk of the issue department of the Corporation of General Securities, Limited, who had ordered the previous printing for the Wakefield loan. The defendants desired to conceal what they w'ere doing from Mr. Page. Thus a certificate amounting to £400,000 w'as fabricated. “The defendants were hard-pressed for ready money. These four gentlemen, directors of an issuing house in the City of London, stooped so low as to issue worthless scrip. Mr. George P. Russell, one of the directors of Russell and Company, was completely deceived. The printers, with no reason for knowing that these supplementary issues were in any way spurious, accordingly printed and delivered them to Mr. Page, whom Dixon told they w’ould be exchanged for the original scrip, which would be cancelled. “As the exchange was not made, Mr. Page asked Daniels if he realised that he had issued more scrip than the amount of the loans. Daniels said, ‘Technically we have. I am seeing to it.’ ” Mr. Roome continued that these spurious issues would be the subject of further charges. There were men being ruined owing to the action of these defendants, whose uttering of spurious securities had rendered them liable to 14 years’ penal servitude.