AFRICAN GOLD FRAUDS

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26093, 21 April 1950, Page 7

AFRICAN GOLD FRAUDS

CASE AGAINST FORMER DIRECTORS NINETY CHARGES HEARD BY COURT (N.Z. Press Association.—Copyright) ( Rec- 7 p.m.) CAPE TOWN, April 19. Two former company directors, Joseph Milne and Norbert Stephen Erleigh, were found guilty in Johannesburg to-day of having incited officers of New Union Goldfields to make false entries in the company’s books. On two other counts of the indictment, Mr Justice Lucas, who to-day began reading a 400-page judgment, found botn men not guilty. They were charged with theft, fraud, and contravention of the Companies Act on 90 counts. Their trial began about two years ago. The judgment, which is expected to take four days to read, will end the most intricate and expensive trial in South African legal history. The trial is estimated to have cost £250,000. Investigators were sent abroad, witnesses were brought from England, and a special accountancy investigation was set up. Milne and Erleigh were formerly joint managing directors of New Union Goldfields—a mining, and later a financial and share-dealing company, which at one time controlled more than 160 other companies. In evidence, it was said that the companies made more than £10,000,000 under Erleigh’s and Milne’s joint direction during the Second World War. On the main charges, the Crown contended tnat Milne and Erleigh received money which should have gone to companies owned by New Union Goldfields.

Milne and Erleigh pleaded not guilty to all the charges, contending that they had received only their just rewards, and that they had received them openly, without any attempt at fraud or concealment. Mr Justice Lucas said that a picture had been unfolded before the Court of fantastic dealings by Erleigh and Milne in millions of shares and numerous companies. From the end of December, 1956, till the foundations of their group crumbled away, towards the end of 1947, Milne and Erleigh had dominated the board of the New Union Goldfields group. ‘‘The company was really a gambling house saved from earlier collapse by the miracle of a discovery of gold-bearing land in the Orange Free State,” said Mr Justice Lucas.