Rockgas import fine

Press, 16 August 1978, Page 7

Rockgas import fine

PA Wellington Rockgas, Ltd, a member of the Challenge group of companies. will face more than 30 smuggling and related charges. The Magistrate’s Court in Wellington had notification of this when the former general manager of Rockgas, Mr Alan Gordon Brown, aged 41, pleaded guilty to two charges

yesterday — that he smuggled 500 Primus cookers and 500 Primus lamps, and that he imported an electric vapouriser that was a prohibited import. He was discharged without conviction under Section 42 of the Criminal Justice Act on the first charge, and convicted on the second charge and fined $4OO. Mr J, Bowie, prosecuting for the Customs Department, told Mr D. J. Sullivan, S.M., that the defendant had been general manager of Rockgas , Ltd, a number of the Challenge group of companies, : which now faced many • charges relating to the matters before the Court and others. He said that about April 1974, the company was offered the agency for Primus products by the Swedish manufacturer. “As part of the agency agreement, Primus agreed to send Rockgas 500 cookers and 500 lamps free of charge. “The defendant requested that the Swedish company not include these goods on any invoice and put them into a container so that no customs clearance was affected,” said Mr Bowie. “The value of the items involved was $4355. “The defendant subsequently also requested a misleading invoice description for an electric vaporiser that

the company needed urgently for the Crown Lynn company, and which was not on licence. The value of the vaporiser was $3140.” For the defence, Mr G. W. Gendall said the offences came to light after an investigation into Rockgas, and the department was taking two bites at the same cherry in charging both Mr Brown and the company. The company faced 30 to 40 charges, he said. Mr Brown, on his first overseas trip as general manager, obtained the agency from the Primus company and had import licences, he said.

He thought that because the goods were not being sold by the company, but were gifts, they did not have to be included on the shipping documents. Taking into consideration Mr Gendall’s submissions in relation to the smuggling charge and applying the saying of Bacon that the law was something like a cobweb in which small people got enmeshed while larger ones escaped, the Magistrate discharged the defendant without conviction under section 42 of the Criminal Justice Act.

In relation to the second charge, he said that to ask for a false description showed a guilty mind. The defendant was fined $4OO.