SECRET MINT?

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 25, 31 January 1933, Page 8

SECRET MINT?

COINS IN SYDNEY.

CHINESE UNDER SUSPICION.

CHARGE OF UTTERING LAID.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, January 27,

Last week three well-educated Chinamen speaking perfect English, and a woman and three children —the family of one of the men—left Sydney, with but a very remote prospect of return. They had come here originally to open an Oriental business—rugs, tapestries, embroideries, carvings—and for a time everything went well with them. The head of the firm, Kwong Khi Tsing, came here with the highest credentials— he is a graduate of Shanghai University —and holds "a diploma of international commerce." But the 'police, who had been much disturbed by reports of spurious coinage of late, traced a large number of dubious shillings to the Oriental Arm, and la?t August the three principals were arrested: The Commonwealth Treasury and the banks ' throughout Australia were much alarmed by the evidence that the police produced. For the shillings were in appearance almost perfect, and only expert metallurgical analysis could detect the fraud. Bankers admitted that under ordinary circumstances they would accept without question as genuine any quantity of such coins offered to them. Secret of Mystery. The secret of the mystery lies, of course, in the low price of silver and the great difference between the face value and the bullion value of our silver coinage. From loz of silver costing 1/6, silver shillings indistinguishable from the Australian coin can be made to the value of 5/0. The charge against the accused was not that they had made the coins, but that they had put them into circulation. There may be a secrct mint or "blind factory" in China, but so far the Shanghai detective service

has been unable to discover it. This means that Australia can be flooded with cheap shillings from China, and the exchange value of our silver coinage might be almost completely destroyed.

Under the circumstances, the authorities naturally decided that they must take vigorous action against those responsible for the circulation of the coins here. Costly Defence. On the charge of "uttering," one of the Chinese was acquitted. The other two maintained to the laet that they had no knowledge of the fraud; they believed the coins to be genuine, and they had simply been made the innocent tools of clever criminals. They have spent several thousands of pounds in their defence since last August, but the end of it all was that the authorities, without inflicting any direct legal penalty, practically issued sentence of deportation against them.

Kwong Khi Tsing still says that he has 'been made "the catspaw of others," and that he has suffered through no fault of his own. This may be perfectly true, but what the authorities have to consider is the danger to which our currency system is still exposed. For if coins of such perfect types can be so easily introduced into the country, a secret mint in China may find other ways of floating them into the channels of Australian trade —with great profit to counterfeiters and incalculable harm to the Commonwealth.

A woman who stole a dress at a Brighton shop, and took it back several days later and asked for some alterations to be made, was fined £10 for theft at Brighton. The magistrate commended the shop assistant for apprehending the woman, Mrs. Ethel Dickins, aged 35, of Portslade.