JAP. NAVAL SCANDALS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLV, Issue 55, 5 March 1914, Page 5

JAP. NAVAL SCANDALS.

Mr. Denham goes to Manchester tomorrow on the Lord Mayor's invitation, and inspects the canal; thence he goes to Liverpool, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

REDUCING THE VOTE. TOKYO, March 4. The chief ordnance instructor at the Naval College has been dismissed from the service and arrested iv connection with the naval scandals.

Baron Saito (Minister of Marine) opposes the Upper House's proposal to reduce the naval vote by £7.000.000, holding that this will seriously hamper the defences of the country.

Tlie naval scandals in Japan were discovered in a curious manner. Karl Richtor, a shorthand clerk, was sent out by tho Siemens and Schuckert Company lo their Tokyo agency, where he appropriated certain confidential letters. These, he alleged, contained proof that the firm had practised bribery on a largo scale in the higher ranks of Japanese officialdom, and with this imputation he offered to surrender the correspondence for a sum of £2,500. Although he had been previously convicted of theft and forgery, he urged in his defence when charged with blackmail in Berlin that his morals had been contaminated by the corrupt practices of his employers, and with a view to driving home this point he demanded that the stolen letters should be read. These letters showed that many high officials had received commission-' from the firm for naval and wireless orders. A sentence of eight years' penal servitude upon Bichtcr was asked for by the prosecutor, but the Court imposed only a quarter of this, adducing, in mitigation of punishment, that ''the not quite straightforward manipulations of the firm of Schuckert might, perhaps, to some extent have acted as an incitement ou tho accused."' The judgment is to he appealed against, and, apparently, one ground which will be brought forward against it will be that, as the offence was committed in .lapan, the German Courts have no jurisdiction.

Since the case was heard many prominent Japanese naval men have been ar rested for being concerned in the scandals.