POSSESSOR OF BOMBS

Hawera Star, Volume LI, 24 May 1932, Page 6

POSSESSOR OF BOMBS

ACCUSED SERGEEFF’S CAREER. BUSINESS AT LYTTELTON. George Sergeeff, who was arrested at Auckland on Thursday, chdrged with being in possession of bombs, is well known at- Lyttelton, whei-e for some time during 1920 lie Was iil business says the “Christchurch Times.” Sergeff came to New Zealand seem after the war, aiid was engaged in the coastal and intercolonial trade as a firemari, serving for soiife tiihfe on the old turrent steamer Koromiko. In the seamen’s disputes, he never played a very prominent .part, and from wlat can be gathered, he was not altogether what seamen would term an ideal unionist.

, Toward the end of 1920 he came I ashore at Lyttelton and, renting a shop in Canterbury Street, established a dry-cleaning business. Later, he transferred to a building in Norwich Quay, near the Bank of New Zealand, where he founded a dry-cleaning company, with which Was combined a furrier’s business. He next established himself i in Storey’s Building in Manchester) Street, Christchurch. Sergeeff sustain-, ed ja loss When the shop was burned out, and he then transferred to a stop in Colombo Street. About 1922 he left for Auckland and since then his whereabouts w r eTe vn-' known to his Christchurch acquaint-1 ances until the news of his arrest on Thursday. It is stated that he visited ■ Lyttelton some time ago as a member of the crew of the freighter Waiofcapu He was not seen ashore.

Sergeeff, who is said to he a Cossack, is short of stature and very strong. He told a number of his acquaintances at Lyttelton when he first visited the uort while trading on the coast that he had escaped from Russia, where his father, who was in the army, and the rest of his family had been massacred during the revolution. He had managed to escape from Russia by walking across Sibera to Vladvostok in company with five other Russians, three of whom died on the arduous journey.