Police check on medical fund

Press, 10 February 1982, Page 3

Police check on medical fund

PA Auckland Two members of .the Auckland police Fraud Squad will investigate alleged irregularities in the Cook Island medical trust fund set up five years ago when the cancer therapist. Milan Brych. began working there. Detective Senior-Sergeant Peter Doone and an accountant. Mr Peter Priest, both of the Fraud Squad's company section, will leave for the Coqk Islands this week-end. Their inquiries follow a request from ' the Cook Islands police for New Zealand assistance in the investigation of alleged irregularities. The Cook Islands Medical Research Institute was set up in 1977 and run by a trust

which was expected to make $300,000 a year from the influx of terminally ill cancer patients from Australia and New Zealand. The institute was to make its money out of patient accommodation and rental of hospital beds to patients.

It was disbanded about 15 months later when Mr Brych went to California a few weeks before the collapse of the sympathetic Cook Islands Government of the late Mr Albert (then Sir Albert) Henrv in 1978.

The investigation is the latest police inquiry stemming from Mr Brych’s cancer therapy. He is at present awaiting trial in the United Slates on charges of having conspired to violate health and safetv codes.