Directors Gaoled For Tax Frauds

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30535, 2 September 1964, Page 17

Directors Gaoled For Tax Frauds

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) PERTH, September 1. Two former directors of Reid Murray Developments (W.A.) Pty., Ltd., were each sentenced to six months’ hard labour by Mr Justice Hale in the criminal court at Perth today. They are Peter Charles Sullivan, aged 42, and John Lawrence Simpson, aged 34, joint managing directors of the company. They were sentenced to six months’ hard labour on each of 12 counts of having caused false entries to be made in the company books with intent to defraud, and were sentenced to six months on each charge, 11 of them

to be served concurrently. On two additional charges Sullivan was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment to be served, after the expiry of his other sentence and another six months to be served concurrently with it Simpson was sentenced to an additional three months cumulative on the earlier term with a further three months concurrent The Judge deplored the attitude taken by some people that there was nothing wrong with moves to cheat the Taxation Department. In fact this meant a fraud on the general body of taxpayers, he said. The 12 charges of false entries, with intent to defraud, were not tax prosecu-

tions, but fraud covered by the criminal code which provided a maximum of seven years for each offence. The Judge said he was not impressed by the plea that the two company directors had now lost their working lives and financial security. He could not see that a man who was not content with an annual income of £6OOO should be treated more leniently, than a man who started with less. On August 21, after a sixday trial, a jury convicted them of the 12 charges alleging that, with intent to defraud, they caused false entries to be made in books of the three companies. Yesterday, after a threeday trial, a jury of seven men

and fiye women acquitted them by direction of the Judge on a charge of having stolen £2Bl and found them guilty .of two other charges. The three charges alleged that in 1961 they stole £2Bl on February 27, 821 bricks on or about March 8 and a quantity of electrical fittings on or about May 3. It was alleged that the money and the goods belonged to Brenton Buildings and that they were used in the construction of a swimming pool in the backyard of Sullivan’s home. Witnesses told the Judge that both men were regarded as being honest and trustworthy and that Sullivan had been a member of Claremont Town Council for 11 years.