Twomey Convicted On Fifteen Charges, Fined £375

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30389, 13 March 1964, Page 17

Twomey Convicted On Fifteen Charges, Fined £375

Kevin Ellis Twomey, a former customs ofncer, was convicted in a reserved decision by Mr A. P. Blair, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court, yesterday on 15 charges of being knowingly concerned, or alternatively aiding K, F. Meates and Companv, Ltd., in the importation of unlicensed goods into New Zealand.

Twomey was fined a total of £375—£25 on each charge—and he was ordered to pay a fee of lOOgns to the Crown Prosecutor.

Mr C. M. Roper, with him Mr N. R, Morgan, appeared for the Crown, Mr R. Stacey, of Wellington, appeared for Twomey, who pleaded not guilty to all charges. Mr Stacey said that an appeal would be lodged. “I find without difficulty that goods were imported by Meates and Company, Ltd., without having licences, or adequate licences, to support them as required by law,” the Magistrate said. “I find also that Twomey was the officer of the Customs Department who sanctioned, or at least did not reject, these inadequate and therefore invalid licences." The prosecution had to establish that Twomey acted with the intention of defeating the strict application of the Import Control Regulations. It was clear enough that Twomey was involved in these illegal importations, as he was the customs officer who passed the defective licences. “Central Question” "The central question is as to the nature of Twomey’s Involvement. The Crown’s case is that it went beyond carelessness, which is not an offence, and that he was a deliberate participant in a breach of the regulations,” said the Magistrate. The statistical evidence by itself was sufficient to raise grave suspicions against Twomey. In the period under review Twomey dealt with 17 of some 26 entries received by the Customs Department from Meates and Company, Ltd. An investigation failed to disclose any major errors in the nine entries processed by other officers or in two of the entries processed by Twomey. In the other 15 entries processed by Twomey errors were discovered, but charges had been laid in respect of 12 only of these. The errors were major ones, In that they consisted of passing defective licences. The investigation went deeper than merely uncovering the errors, as it made some attempt to check whether the errors were part of a general carelessness or were particular to Meates and Company, Ltd.

The department examined Twomey’s other work on the six days in which he had dealt with the entries in question by Meates and Company, Ltd. On those days he had dealt also with 217 other entries. Of these 187 were checked, and only three errors were found. Substantially, said the Magistrate, he found that the Crown evidence on this aspect had been proved. “These figures seem to negate a general carelessness by Twomey, and the inference could be drawn that for some reason he deliberately favoured Meates and Company, Ltd.,” said the Magistrate. The Crown coupled this with . some evidence of a friendly association between Twomey and Mr Meates. The defence could rightly say that this did not go very far. There was nothing sinister in any of this evidence, looked at alone. It was unfortunate for Twomey that the one importer he selected to ask for a favour should be the one he was now accused of deliberately helping. It was consistent with the grave allegations the Crown had made. “I feel bound to say that the evidence against Twomey is such that adverse inferences can certainly be drawn against him,” the Magistrate said. Dealing with the case for the defence the Magistrate said that apart from the house incident, there was no evidence of Twomey’s having received any favours from Meates or of any intimate association. “There is evidence that Twomey was a hard-working officer whose capacity for work was above average, and that because of this a high proportion of importers preferred to deal directly with him.” As well as being busy at his office, Twomey was at the material times harassed by his son’s illness and his wife’s breakdown in health. In this environment he was susceptible to carelessness. On some of the files in which the defective licences were referred to Twomey he

had made a notation which indicated that further action was required. The defence had made the forceful comment that a guilty mind would seek to slide the files through smoothly and would be unlikely to do anything to call attention to them, the Magistrate said. In 1963 Twomey had taken some initiative in stopping an entry of cargo for Meates and Company, Ltd. There was evidence that to some extent Twomey was entitled to rely on the accuracy of the customs agent with regard to the licences. There was evidence of Twomey’s good character and record. The strength of the Crown case lay in the cumulative, persuasive effect of a number of facts which had been proved beyond doubt. It was irrefutable that Twomey made a considerable number of errors relating to licences, the effect of which was to permit unauthorised goods to enter New Zealand. “If there had been merely one or two mistakes one could readily put them down to human error,” the Magistrate said. “Even if there are a number of mistakes one could still assume that they were the result of human error if it be shown that the mistakes were general, part of a pattern of carelessness in Twomey’s work generally. “Coincidences” “It has been shown that, except in a few insignificant instances, these licence mistakes related to Meates and Company, Ltd. alone. That is one coincidence. There is a further coincidence that, of the 26 applications submitted by Meates and Company, Ltd. 17 were handled by Twomey, when by the law of averages and even taking into account his special capacity for work, he should have handled considerably fewer.” Another coincidence was that there were no licence errors by Meates and Company, Ltd. in the nine applications dealt with by other members of the staff and 12 major errors in the applications dealt with by Twomey. Of the 187 other entries handled by Twomey at the same time he made only one major licence error. “I cannot accept that carelessness coupled with coincidence provides a possible explanation for this pointed connexion between Twomey and Meates and Company, Ltd. I am driven to the conclusion that for reasons which may never be known Twomey deliberately ignored the Import Control Regulations as regards Meates and Company, Ltd., and so enabled it to get in prohibited goods,” the Magistrate said. The Magistrate said he would impose the minimum penalty required by statute.