Declarations hearing

Press, 10 February 1982, Page 5

Declarations hearing

The hearing continued yesterday in the District Court in a case in which a Christchurch manufacturer and exporter is alleged to have obtained substantial export incentive allocations by wilfully making false applications for replacement licences under the export incentive scheme. The defendant. Kevin Francis Meates. aged 51. a company director, has denied seven charges which alleged that he wilfully made false allegations under the Customs Act by declaring the unexpended balances of import licences to be more than the true amounts, between August 1977, and June. 1978. The alleged overstatements listed in the charges amount to $43,648.

The case, which opened on Monday, is set down for all this week. Il is being heard by Judge Palerson. Mr G. K. Panckhurst appears for the department, and Mr J. D. Dalgety and Mr B. W. Brown for the defendant.

Terence Ernest Berkett. a supervising customs officer, in Christchurch and formerly Collector of Customs in Greymouth, was the first witness called on Monday morning and was cross-exa-mined for nearly a full day to late yesterday morning.

He said in evidence that while Collector of Customs one of his duties was the issue of import licences. He gave evidence of receving lost licence applications, and applications to revalidate licences into the new licensing year, from the defendant. These were submitted to the Trade and Industry Department and he then

issued licences in accordance with the decision that had been reached.

Cross-examined he agreed that at the time he had not had much dealings with the export incentive scheme. He was generally unfamiliar with the process, for a period. He agreed that mistakes could occur in "paperwork." Asked if. when licences were declared lost, nobody could be certain what the unexpended value might be Mr Berkett said he presumed the licence holder would have an idea what it might be. He thought the importer should know. He knew that the defendant was a very busy man and. had business interests other than those in Greymouth.

He agreed that importers often left the department to keep an eye on the arithmetic to a certain degree. ' The witness acknowledged

that an importer, upon an export being made, was entitled to a replacement licence and was also entitled to a bonus licence. He conceded that some transactions made in the licences did not get on the records.

A retired postmaster. Ronald Leighton Grant, formerly postmaster of the Sydenham Post Office, said the defendant was a regular customer, calling at his office to have customs declarations witnessed and signed.

Cross-examined he said he could not recollect any occasion when he had signed a declaration handed to him while out of his office. He said that in declarations of the type involved he insisted that they be signed in front of him. If it was alreadysigned and brought to him somewhere else in the building he would insist on a further signature.