CITY SOLICITOR'S CRUEL FRAUDS

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 201, 26 August 1939, Page 8

CITY SOLICITOR'S CRUEL FRAUDS

WITH bowed head and flushed cheeks, a partner in a firm of city solicitors clutched the rail of the dock at Old Bailey while Mr. Justice Hilbery told him: — "For years and years, you and your partner, who has since died, have been cruelly plundering your clients. The man in the dock, Harold Man a ton Ommanney, 55, who lived at Henley-on-Thames, then heard the judge pass sentence of five years' penal servitude. He would not allow his wife and family to see his disgrace at the Old Bailey. His. personal typist, the only business associate to be near when he was sentenced, did not actually witness his departure from the dock. In a quiet corner outside the Courtroom she was told: "He took it like a man." He Entered a Plea of Guilty C'mmanney had pleaded guilty to conspiring with Edmund Giffard Oliver fraudulently to convert to his own use money entrusted to him on behalf of clients of Messrs. Sutton, Ommanney and Oliver, and fraudulently converting to his own use £4296 1/2, received on behalf of Major J. S. Courtauld. Mr. L. A. Byrne, who prosecuted, related that in January last Oliver died, and in April Mr. Smith, a chartered accountant, was instructed to look into the affairs of the company. Ommanney told him that Oliver had made away with certain trust funds. An examination of the books showed that £30,000 was missing. Mr. Smith found that the average profits for the last two years were just under £2000 a year, but during that period Oliver's drawings had averaged £9700 aad Ommanney'a £3200 a year. Between 1917 and the end of 1938, Oliver had overdrawn £109,040, and Ommanney £31,154 from clients' money, and at the end of December, 1938, the amount due to clients was £163,000. Detective-Inspector Albert Jonning told the Court that Ommanney a married man with a son and daughter, had attended Winchester College and, later, University College, Oxford.

Mr. G. D. Roberts, K.C. defending explained that Ommanney did not wish to try to shift the responsibility He was away on active service until 1919, and when he came back he ought to have stopped the overdrawing, but be was too weak to take decisive action.

Passing sentence, Mr. Justice Hilbery told him: "You have held a position in a firm which has borne an honoured name in the City of London and amori" those who move in the legal profession. °

'•You began with an education which put you into surroundinars where the influences brought to bear on you could be nothing but the best.

"You passed into your articles with a firm in which I am certain you learned nothing but the highest traditions of the profession, and from these bright beginnings you stand now dis<raced ruined, and in the shadow of the gaol. "This is not a case of some poor and needy practitioner dipping his haad in the hour of his need into his clients' money, hopelessly, but hone the less hoping sometime to repay it." Mr. Justice Hilbery added that it was only fair to say there was not a single attempt in it to shift the blame from Ommanney'fi shoulders to those of his partner. There were facts, however, 'which showed that the wicked system of overdrawing clients' money had already begun by the time Ommanney returned from active service. He was satisfied that Ommanney 'wag not the originator of the system whifii obtained over all these years. Had it Jbeen otherwise he would have thought it necessary to impose a maximum sentence. As he was satisfied that Ommanney's conduct was not the worst in the affair he would sentence him to five years' penal servitude. Like a background to Ommaamey'a career of fraud lies the story of the life of his late partner, Edmund Giffard Oliver. In 1932 Oliver took a seven-year tatse of Bedale Hall, a large at Bedale, Yorkshire. There he lived the life of a wealthy country squire. Period furniture and old masters adorned the lavishly furnished rooms and the extensive kennels housed numbers of pedigree dogs.

About the time of Oliver's death in his London flat laet January, the lease of Bedale Hall expired, and he was planning to move to Thornton Watlass TT*n, near Ripon.