CONSPIRACY CHARGE

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 38, 8 November 1933, Page 9

CONSPIRACY CHARGE

Prosecution of London Financier CHOSEN CORPORATION CASE By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright (Received November 7, 7.25 p.m.) London, November 7. The chief point made by counsel defending Martin Coles Harman on charges of fraud was the prosecution’s failure to produce a single victim of the alleged conspiracy. Most of the shareholder witnesses came to curse but remained to bless, as the shares were stated to be worth 2/6 when the case opened and are now worth 22/-. Nobody hud lost a penny. Harman had averted a crash. Harman said the balance-sheet when he signed it was a true statement. The financier. Martin Coles Harman, who was declared bankrupt, in January with liabilities of £605,544 and assets of £10.636, was charged in March with conspiracy to defraud in connection with a Korean syndicate styled the Chosen Corporation. H. 11. Pounds, B. F. Conigrave, and E. G. Changeat. also financiers, were similarly charged. The prosecution stated that the Chosen Corporation was formed in 1923 to sell a Korean mining concession to a company to be formed. Harman obtained control of the corporation in 1930. Harman, with the concurrence of the co-defendants. used the corporation’s money to get his other companies out of grave difficulties regardless of the shareholders in the corporation.