£30,000 CLAIMED.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXXII, Issue 2769, 31 August 1931, Page 5

£30,000 CLAIMED.

LYING IN STATE TREASURYOWNERS NOT NOTIFIED. A sum of at least’£3o,ooo is’held by the New Zealand Treasury as unclaimed money, and Mr S. P. Briggs, who makes a special work of tracing next of kin, says that the Treasury makes no attempt to let people know for whom unclaimed money is lying waiting. . - /Instances have been brought to notice where persons living in straitened circumsances have been entitled to large sums of money unclaimed in the Treasury. In some cases soldiers have died on service leaving considerable sums in banks. 1 'From ■ 1901, when the Unclaimed Moneys Act came into force, until 1928, £29,204 was paid into the Consolidated Funds, and the records show that of that sum less than £l5O has been claimed and refunded. In 1901, £2l was paid over. There were £4,902 in 1905, £7,055 .in 1907, £2,359 in 1925, and varying sums in the years in between. A sum of £8,436 is held by the Treasury unclaimed under Section 69 of the Trustee Act, 1908. Under the Finance Act, 1908, the Public Trustee is compelled to pay over all moneys held by him on any account whatsoever unclaimed for six years. Mr Briggs pointed out that there was a duty on the part of the Gov-, ernment to advertise particulars of unclaimed money. At a half per cent, charge on the money held, there would be more than sufficient to pay the cost of publicity. In one instance a sum of over £lOO, was lying in the Treasury to' the credit of a e North Island Maori. Private inquiry showed that the Maori had died years ago. His widow and two children, in a struggling position, were located and the money paid over. In another case, a considerable sum of money was left in a bank by a soldier who was killed early in the war, and not until last year was the soldier’s mother privately informed that her son’s money was lying in the Treasury.