DARK SIDE OF BUSINESS

Taranaki Daily News, 8 April 1927, Page 9

DARK SIDE OF BUSINESS

COMMERCIAL IMMORALITY ALLEGATION OF MALPRACTICE. VIEWS OF OFFICIAL ASSIGNEE. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Auckland, Last Night. “If there is any truth in the statement, it reveals a deplorable state of affairs in business. I have had plenty of cases before me to show that business morality is at a low ebb.” This observation was made by Mr. G. N. Morris, Deputy Official Assignee this morning, when allegations of malpractice in business were made by Archibald Sturrock (a bankrupt) against men for whom he had erected some flats at Cheltenham. Mr. F. G. Baskett, at a later stage in the meeting, said he did not think the statement should be allowed to go out without some expression of opinion on it from the meeting. “The commercial morality in Auckland is as high as any in New Zealand, and commercial morality in New Zealand is the highest in the world,” he added. Mr. Morris said he was bound to take a pessimistic view of the matter, occupying the position he did. “I did not mean to infer that the whole of the business men had a low standard of morality.” Mr. Morris said that in the course of his business he did not encounter the best quality of business morality. There was usually something in a bankrupt’s statements “not altogether clean and straight.” Bankrupts, in many instances, had traded on their creditors’ money for months, when they must have known the position they were in. “An official assignee is bound to become a pessim’ t in time. I did not mean to say that the business community in Auckland is rotten through and through,” said Mr. Morris.