AN AUSTRALIAN FRAUD.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2432, 1 December 1892, Page 4

AN AUSTRALIAN FRAUD.

Some time ago Mr Joh Hogan, retired gaol warder, wrote to the Minister of Justice explaining how, upon false pretences, he had been induced to deposit his savings in the Anglo-Australian Bank, and how, the Bank having gone into liquidation, he would not receive a penny, and he claimed that he had been robbed, and called upon the Government to prosecute the robbers. After full enquiry by the Crown Law Department, the Government issued warrants against Charles Raymond Staples, the Chairman of Directors ; John Heraldson, the Manager ; and F, E. Norwood, one of the Auditors; also, for David West; R. Williams Dilly, Sydney Gunn Allwright, Directors ; and Charles G. Senior, Auditor. The most of these warrants have now been executed. Staples was the promoter of the Bank, and held almost the entire interest in it, the others being merely dummies to make up the five shareholders necessary to form a Company. It is said that the Bank was started without a halfpenny of capital, and that the first transaction was the crediting of C. R. Staples with an amount of £136,000, represented by a deposit of 15,000 British Bank shares, valued at £9 eaah. He then exchanged £IOO,OOO of this amount for Anglo-Australian shares, and was left with £36,000 to his credit, all on the security of British Bank shares, I and without a penny changing hands. A reserve fund of £IO,OOO, and profits of £16,000, shown on the balance-sheet were fictitious, and according to the Crown case the end of it all is that Staples received, by way of overdraft, the whole of the deposits, £70,478, and his own fictitious credit of £35,000, a total of £105,000, against which the Bank holds no security whatever.