HAIRY GROUP CRASH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20931, 22 January 1930, Page 7

HAIRY GROUP CRASH

TRIAL OF THE PRINCIPALS. THE OLD BAILEY CROWDED. WOMEN ON THE JURY. (United Press Association.) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) . LONDON, January 20. Peers, hankers, society women, stockbrokers, and members of Parliament inundated the officials, requesting accommodation at the Old Bailey on the occasion of the Hatry trial. Queues formed shortly after daylight. Clarence Hatry, Edmund Daniels, John Graham Goodfellow Dixon, and Albert Edward Tabor were charged on 50 counts involving £2,000,000. The jury included two women. All the defendants pleaded not guilty. Sir William'' Jowitt, for the Crown gave the history of the Austin Friars Trust, which was incorporated in May, 1927, and was compulsorily wound up in September, 1929. Ho said: “ Sir William Garnsey (chartered accountant) will tell you that the company’s liabilities in the course of 29 months amounted to £19,000,000. His estimate of its assets is £4,000,000. One of the Austin Friars Trust’s schemes was the acquisition of shares in existing steel companies, for which the trust had to raise £4,000,000. Approximately £1,500,000 of this money was raised, which was intended to be utilised in the purchase of steel shares. It was actually utilised by the defendants for other purposes. The history of the case is mainly the desperate struggle of the Austin Friars Trust and these defendants—its directors—to get back this £1,500,000.” Sir William Jowitt said he would not present the case as one in which three of the defendants were the tools of the 1 other defendant. All three were old . enough to think and act for themselves. The frauds would have been quite impossible unless there had been the willing ,rand active co-operation of each of these ;|four men through the whole course. Sjr William Jowitt then detailed the {indictments ofjorgery in connection with jthe Swindon, Gloucester, and Wakefield (corporations. “The name of the absent ’director, John Gialdini, appears fre“quently as the principal in these transactions,” Sir William Jowitt continued. ■“When the jury realises the sustained perseverance and effort necessary to place of pounds worth of bogus coritifioates with the' public they will also nealise that I am not exaggerating when ;I say that this is one of the gravest cases >it has ever been my lot to hear of.”

Sir William Jowitt explained that if Gialdini was in Britain he would certainly have been accused. Unfortunately tlie extradition treaty with Italy did not provide for the production ot an Italian to Britain or vice versa. The accused were remanded.