STOLE £85,000

Taranaki Daily News, 9 July 1929, Page 16

STOLE £85,000

UNPROFITABLE SPECULATIONS. SOUTH AFRICAN CASE. Jamas Rennie Aldred, aged 32, formerly a clerk in . the South African Reserve ißank, has been sentenced at the Criminal Sessions to penal servitude for the theft of £85,000 from the bank. Aldred said he got into financial difficulties when he was a clerk in the National .Bank. When he joined the Reserve Bank in 1924 he was an unrehabilitated insolvent (although the bank was unaware of this). Aldred said his troubles preyed on his inind and he speculated in order to pay his creditors. He was induct'd by two stockbrokers to provide £5OOO to deal in silver shares which they controlled. This money he embezzled from the bank, expecting to receive back the capital with profits within six months. “If I had done so,” said the defendant, “I would have paid back the money.” ■ But the two stockbrokers came again and again to him for more money. He gave them altogether £85,000, of which he had got back only £3OOO. In passing sentence, Mr. Justice Krause Commented upon the “encouragement and inducements held out to the prisoner by other people.” He added that he was impressed by the manner in which Aldred gave evidence, and the manly way in which he had faced the matter when found out. The judge modified his original intention 'of passing a severer sentence. As a first offender, Aldred must serve only four and g-half years.