Police attitude to JBL criticised

Press, 7 July 1977, Page 4

Police attitude to JBL criticised

Counsel for James Jeffs criticised the police investigating the JBL case in his closing address to the jury in the Auckland Supreme Court.

Mr M. B. Williams said he could not criticise the former detective inspector in charge of the JBL investigation for not having the mental capacity to understnad the group, but he had to condemn him for not wanting to understand. The trial is before Mr Justice Somers and a jury of ten men and two women.

Nine former directors or executives of the group have pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to defraud the public. Members of the police were, Mr Williams said, servants of the public. They took an oath to seek the truth, but that was not what the police involved in the JBL investigation had done. Everything Jeffs had written from years back, what he had said in his statement, and what he had told the Court in the witness box had been utterly consistent because it was' absolutely true. He said that syndication in Auckland was no more than four per cent of the entire business operations of JBL.

Such matters as the wording of brochures had not been Jeffs’ responsibility, said Mr Williams. He submitted the A.N.Z. bank had reacted with “massive overkill” when it had appointed a recever. By that stage the JBL overdraft had again been inside its limit.

“I suggest to you this unhappily was a public execution of JBL, which wasn’t an establishment company," he said. The JBL New Zealand auditor was the one man “out of step” among all the company’s overseas auditors, Mr Williams, told the Court. “Yet it was he (the auditor) who is called to give evidence of the validity of the accounts which the prosecution said were falsified and padded,” said Mr Williams. Mr Williams was commenting on the 1971 annual accounts for the group. He submitted that the auditor, Mr Wiseman, had been “utterly obstructed" as far as those accounts were concerned. Counsel said a volume of evidence had been

heard regarding competing accounting theories. Perhaps Jeffs had been before his time and proceeding a little more quickly than a Royal commission on that subject, said Mr Williams. “If he has to suffer that criticism then, he gladly does so.”

Mr L. W. Brown. Q.C., for defendant Barrie Phelps Hopkins, said that the accused and his counsel had taken a very small part in the proceedings. In the relevant period, Hopkins had, for all practical purposes, had nothing to do with the JBL operation. It was interesting to compare the Crown case as it was now with the manner with which it was opened to the jury. In terms of fairness the opening had left much to be desired. “It was unnecessarily prejudicial, containing general assertions not matched by the evidence,” said Mr Brown. “In the case of my own client there was prejudice when he was described as the senior legal advisor of the group. “He was nothing of the sort, and never was.” Mr Brown said that within a short time, police witnesses had been debunking the importance of cash flow material.

Hopkins, said _ Mr Brown, was basically nothing more than a professional director, attending board meetings once a month for half a day. Mr R. L. MacLaren, for Rex Evans (a chartered accountant), said that the accused had been unjustly accused of criminal offences. All defendants were not guilty, he told the court, but the letters JBL gave rise to an emotive reaction. A book had been written on the topic and many probably would be. The case had been well publicised. Mr MacLaren said the jury had been asked to find his client a crook, but the evidence supported the preposition that Evans had been throughout his association with the board of JBL a thoroughly decent, honest, and conservative accountant. He said that in December 1971, and January 1972, Evans had expressed concern about the liquidity situation, but that was not a new experience. It had been part and parcel of the JBL organisation, and

the group had learned to live with it. “As a member of the board, I suggest Evans was acting entirely responsibly, entirely properly and entirely the way a criminal would not,” said Mr MacLaren. He submitted that the group had not been financially unsound.

Evans had been a professional director. He had been a full-time chartered accountant.

It might well have been he said, that the chairman, James Jeffs, had selected his professional directors for set objectives. He had regarded the roles of directors in JBL as statutory. They had performed the functions allotted to them, but little else.