GAOL SENTENCES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23996, 20 June 1941, Page 8

GAOL SENTENCES

CONSPIRACY CHARGE

LENGTHY TRIAL ENDS

JUDGE'S STRONG COMMENT

(Rcrd. 10.30 p.m.! SYDNEY. .Tune to Convicted of conspiring with .lohn W'ooleott Forbes ami two others, not in custody, to defraud the shareholders of the Scottish Loan and Finance Company, Limited, Ronald Bruce Walker, former State Parliamentarian, was today sentenced to three years' imprisonment, and Albert Lev it us, solicitor, to five years' imprisonment, (.'live Oscar Airey. who was acquitted, was discharged I'he jury was unable to agree regarding William Kingsiey Wicks, accountant, who was remanded for retrial when called upon, his bail being reduced from C'l 000 to £IOO. , Mr. Justice Haisc Rogers, in sentencing Walker and Levitus. said that, assuming the prisoners had been led astray b.v a man cleverer than themselves. the fact remained that sharehawking had become an infamous occupation. Companies had sprung up whose main object was the sale of their own shares. Suave, plausible persons who went about procuring the purchase ol shares by the public were a menace to the community, and most of them could be described as cheats and robbers. Ibe offence of which both men had been convicted was the more infamous because it was engineered on the basis of false balance-sheets and faked financial statements.

The trial was regarded as one oi the most protracted in the history ol New South Wales Courts. It had been be I ore the Courts for over two years. Some of the evidence in this case was taken in New Zealand.