Brothers Claim Mother’s Autocracy As Defence

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29070, 5 December 1959, Page 14

Brothers Claim Mother’s Autocracy As Defence

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, December 4. Two brothers who farmed a property in Ohariu Valley, with their mother, denied in the Magistrate’s Court at Wellington today, eight charges of wilfully making false income tax returns. One of their defences was that their mother, who has since died, was really responsible for the figures in the returns. • The defendants, Eric Alcock and Norman Ronald Alcock, were represented by Sir Wilfrid Sim, Q.C., with him Mr W. G. L. Mellish. Mr M. B. Scully, S.M., reserved his decision till Monday morning. Mr J. D. Murray, who conducted the prosecution, said the Alcocks were in partnership from 1949 to 1956. Income returned for the eight years totalled £B5OB, but the Inland Revenue Department had now assessed it at almost twice that amount, £15,169. Wilfulness could be inferred from the uniformity of the discrepancies over the years, he said. Henry Keith Bull, an inspector of the Inland Revenue Department, said the only record available to him was an exercise book, recording the sales of produce from April 1, 1953, to March 31, 1956, but it was incomplete. The brothers said their mother had destroyed earlier records before her death in November, 1956 Stanley Keith Rowe, farmer, Ohariu, said that after he took up a farm at Ohariu in 1955, its financial position deteriorated rapidly and the Alcock brothers suggested that he go in for fowls. They told him he could clear between £l2 and £l4 a week provided he could get garbage from town. He was their tenant and there had been litigation between himself and the two brothers. Ronald Norman Alcock, called by Sir Wilfrid Sim. said his age was 54. He did not know when his mother ceased to be a partner in the farm. She handled all

the money and fed the fowls which were hers, till three weeks before she died, He never differed from her. She was ‘‘always the boss.’’ She decided what figures should |?e put in the return, and he trusted her. To Mr Murray, Alcock said he had sold eggs weekly at Khandallah, but that was not before 1955. He did not deny that, in 1957, he and his brother had £10,924 worth of assets between them. Alcock denied having kept money in tins or having had to open a fin with a tin-opener to make somebody a payment for pullets. He would have paid more tax, but his mother would not let them do so. Alcock said he fell out with Rowe after the 1957 General Election. When Rowe and his wife came to thg valley, the Labour vote increased by two, so they must have voted Labour. He was a Nationalist. Three businessmen who had had dealings with the Alcocks said no business with the family was ever concluded unless the mother consented. Two of the witnesses said she was a domineering woman. Eric Alcock said he was now a sheep farmer at Pauatahanui, the partnership with his brother having been dissolved in 1957. Their mother made up the books and decided what should be banked and what drawn. They lived frugally. He had no reason to believe that his mother’s figures were not correct when he put them in the returns.