Five Fined For Selling No-Remittance Vehicles

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29803, 21 April 1962, Page 12

Five Fined For Selling No-Remittance Vehicles

(NZ. Press Association)

AUCKLAND, April 20.

Five persons were fined a total of £245 for breaches of the Customs Amendment Act, 1961, concerning the sale of cars obtained on no-remittance licences in the Magistrate’s Court at Auckland on Thursday.

A similar charge against another person was adjourned until May 3 and three others were adjourned until May 10

Norman Sydney Bouchier pleaded guilty to selling a Holden car before a two-year condition of importation had expired. Mr L. G. H. Sinclair, S.M., fined him £5O and costs.

Mr D. S. Morris, for the Collector of Customs, said Bouchier had received the car at the end of November. 1961, and it had passed to five other owners before being seized by the Customs Department. A Palmerston North woman who then possessed the car had paid about £5OO more than list price for it. Bouchier told the department he had a choice of either not paying his income tax or selling the car to obtain funds. Mr Morris said that if Bouchier had approached the department, and explained his position, the matter would have been dealt with on its merits.

The Magistrate said he would like to know who had received the lion’s share of 'the profit from the sale of the vehicle. A recent arrival from Australia, Mrs G. R. Gracie, was fined £5O and costs on a similar charge concerning a Holden car.

Mr Morris said this vehicle, obtained under the no-remit-tance scheme, arrived in New Zealand late in December last. In a short time it passed to Payne Bros., and Gouldstone Motors, of Auckland. Matamata Motors, and Beale Motors, of Rotorua.

It was then seized

Mr Morris said Gracie and her husband had settled in New Zealand. Her husband had paid a deposit to purchase a business, but later found that the turnover had been misrepresented. Her husband had been forced to forfeit his deposit of £750 and this had left him short of funds. They had then decided to sell the car. The Magistrate fined Andrew Orr Smith £5O and costs for the same offence. Smith said he had exchanged the vehicle for a larger car, and had not realised that he was breaking any regulations when the car was not sold. Ronald Payne, of Onehunga, was fined £6O for failing to comply with the conditions under which two Zephyr cars were imported, and for making a false declaration in respect of the vehicles.

Mr Morris said the two cars were imported in November, 1959, and passed to a succession of owners after being sold to Matamata Motors.

Payne’s mother, Eliza Payne, who was not present in Court, was fined' a total of’£3s for the same offences.

The Magistrate said it had not been shown what profit had been obtained from the sale of these vehicles, but a substantial penalty was needed to stop this trafficking in cars.