ARMY PAYROLLS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25175, 16 March 1943, Page 5

ARMY PAYROLLS

ALLEGED IRREGULARITIES CLERK BEFORE COURT Further charges resulting from alleged .irregularities discovered in acquittance rolls used for the payment of casual clerks employed on army medical boards were heard by Mr H. W. Bundle, S.M., in the City Police Court yesterday, when Claude Alexander Buchanan, formerly a civilian clerk at the Kensington Drill Hall, was charged with forgery and false pretences. Buchanan was alleged to have forged a receipt signature on a roll with the intent that it should be acted upon as genuine, and to have obtained £4 10s by appending fictitious signatures to acquittance rolls. Chief Detective Holmes conducted the prosecution, and Mr E. J. Anderson appeared for the accused. Photographic enlargements of a number of acquittance rolls and of certain signatures on them were produced by Constable G. Clarldge, police photographer. The Method of Payment Captain E. J. Bycroft, assistant district accountant and paymaster, Southern Military District, gave details of the signatures. The amount paid out on nine such signatures, he said, was £4 10s. No payment would have been certified had the signatures been known to be false. No trace could be found of the men said ,lo have made the signatures, and the indications were that the signatures were false. The accused would receive any overtime monthly, in accordance with Public Service regulations. He was not entitled to receive medical board casual clerks’ remuneration. Cross-examined by Mr Anderson, witness said that the duty of a certifying officer was to advise that the persons claiming money were those named on the receipt. Senior Detective Hall said that when he interviewed Buchanan, the accused denied that he had received any money by means of the acquittance rolls. On one roll examined by witness, it appeared that a signature had been erased and another substituted. Exhaustive inquiries had failed to disclose any trace of the persons whose signatures had been questioned. . Major L. A. Rhodes, area staff officer, and Colonel J. G. Jeffery, fortress commander, gave evidence of having certified the acquittance rolls, both witnesses stating that had they known the rolls bore false signatures they would not have signed them. Colonel Jeffery said that, provided it was subject to audit, the form of certification was satisfactory, but it was a physical impossibility, before certifying the rolls, to see every man who signed them. Handwriting Expert’s Evidence Lieutenant R. J. G. Collins, a handwriting expert with 25 years’ experience of examining questioned documents, gave evidence of having, by means of photoggraphic enlargements, found certain similarities between the accused's admitted handwriting and the questioned signatures on the acquittance rolls. His examination of the enlargements, witness added, led him to believe that both the questioned and the admitted writing were the work of the one person. The accused pleaded not guilty, and was committed to the Supreme Court for trial, ball being allowed in his own recognisance of £IOO and one surety of a like amount.