CHARGES OF CONSPIRACY AND FRAUD.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3129, 4 March 1909, Page 5

CHARGES OF CONSPIRACY AND FRAUD.

AN M.P. IN TROUBLE. Received March 3. 8.10 a.m. LONDON. March 2. Owing to the illness of Alderman Smallman, the magistrate hearing the Bottomley casa, another alderman was substituted on the bench. Mr Bottomley now asks for a rehearing of the case from the beginning, but the Crown objects. HIGH COURT REFUSES THE APPLICATION. Received March 3, 8.20 a.m. LONDON, March 2. The High Court of Justice refused to grant Mr Bottomley's application for a mandamus to compel the rehearing of the evidence in his case, Mr Horatio Bottomley, M.P., and a well-known financier, and three ochers, are charged with conspiracy and fraudulent dealing in connection with the Joint Scock Trust Finance Corporation and the Selected Gold Mines of Australia, Ltd., botb of which concerns have been wound up by order of the court. Mr Bottomley was chairman of directors of the Trust. The other defendants are George Francis Fewings, secretary of both companies; William Albert Stevenson, a confidential clerk; and Dalton Easum an accountant, who was auditor to the Trust. The charges, which embraced the two companies and the fmr defendants, set out that they "tetween 20th April. 1904, aid Bth May, 1906, did unlawfully conspire together with divers other persons whose names ; s .re unknown, by divers false pretences and other subtle nuars and devices to cheat and defraud such liege subjects of his Majesty the King who dealt with them or any of them."