BIG PROFIT IN SHIPPING DEAL.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 December 1920, Page 11 (Supplement)

BIG PROFIT IN SHIPPING DEAL.

New York, Oct. 4. . What is described as the biggest seizure yet made by the United States Government, under tho excess profits tax law, is said to have been made by Federal agents. At the Chase National Bank in New York they took possession of 4,900,000 dollars (nominally £&80,000) that had just been paid to two British subjects, H. Farquharson Kerr and Alfred E. Clegg.

The latter wore the organisers, four years ago, of the Kerr Navigation Company, which operated with eleven vessels, formerly Austrian and German, in Belgian and Allied ports and Scandinavia, and of which they are respectively president and vice-president. The money reported to have been seized had been paid to them, for 49,000 shares of the company's stock, by the American Ship and Commerce Company, which recently purchased them.

It is said that the stock cost Kerr and Clegg 10 dollars a share, and that their profit, therefore, is 90 dollars a share, also-that the Government took possession of the purchase money, as a precaution to ensure full payment of the tax being made, Messrs Kerr and Clegg being about to make a business trip abroad.