Supreme Court JBL conspiracy denied

Press, 6 July 1977, Page 4

Supreme Court JBL conspiracy denied

PA Auckland There had been no conspiracy and no intention to defraud the public, Mr J. S. Alexander, counsel for Vaughan Jeffs, has said in the JBL trial in the Supreme Court at Auckland.

Mr Alexander was giving his closing adress to the jury.

The trial is before Mr Justice Somers and a jury of 10 men and two women. Nine former executives or directors of the group face charges of conspiracy to defraud the public.

They are James Edward Jeffs, Vaughan Joseph Jeffs, Philip Paul Sargent (company directors), Hugh Buchanan Jones, Rex Evans, Hugo Stephen Fanning (chartered accountants), Michael Bruce Gurney Thomson, Barrie Phelps Hopkins (solicitors), and Peter Kenneth Leneve Arnold (company executive).

Mr Alexander, said that jurors were being asked to infer the existence of conspiracy from documents. He submitted there was no conspiracy, no conspirators. and no intention to defraud the public in any manner. The Crown had failed to

call any senior members of the investment department which was responsible for syndication. From the beginnings of the JBL investigation and throughout the trial the Crown had shown a basic misunderstanding of that operation. There was no evidence of any action taken by Vaughan Jeffs relating to syndication. He had not read the brochures, did not know their content or their representations being made which the Crown had alleged, said Mr Alexander.

There was no statement in the brochures which could be held to be a representation of the financial soundess of the company. There is no evidence from the salesman or from Miss Gray (a member of the investment department) which could be construed as a statement made by them as to financial soundess. Counsel said that from November, 1971, until receivership 16 building contracts had been performed in the time in which the Crown would have us believe that JBL was financially unsound. Vaughan Jeffs was not concerned with financial matters, he said. He was

not a financier but a practical worker. He had always been guided on financial matters by his brother, Jim. Mr M. B. Williams for James Jeffs, said that after a trial for conspiracy to defraud a fair proportion of the jury might be so confused they would convict anybody even marginally connected, or refuse to convict on the grounds they had been unable to understand the basis for the prosecution. “We ask you, to acquit James Jeffs, not because you don’t understand the basis of the prosecution, but because you do,” he said. Mr Williams said that, motivated no doubt in the wake of New Zealand’s first major collapse, the investigation into JBL went ahead.

“What a price in human misery has followed for the defendants,” he said.

James Jeffs had believed in JBL and he thought the group had a great future. He was the only person in the trial who knew nearly all the facts about the company both here and abroad. The only reason the defendants were in Court was because policemen of little

commercial experience, thrust into the breach by the public furore after New Zealand’s first major collapse, went “looking for evil.”

Said Mr Williams: They found evil in their own minds, but not in the hearts and minds of these men here they have so cruelly accused. After the. public hysteria after the collapse and the “mad, drunken statements of Mr Dwyer (the bank receiver), no English bank would have touched JBL,” said Mr Williams. Mr Williams said there was nothing for which any of the defendants could be asked to answer in a Court of criminal law. He submitted that the investigation done into the vital and central issue of soundness was totally inadequate. He detailed areas and assets of the JBL operation for which no valuations had been placed before the jury.

Mr Williams said: It is the Crown who have brought my clients and the others into Court. It is the Crown who allege JBL squandered its assets and was unsound, but they haven’t put the evidence to you.