PUBLIC TRUST COMMISSION.

Western Star, Issue 1572, 20 June 1891, Page 2

PUBLIC TRUST COMMISSION.

(By Telegraph.) Wellisoton’, Friday. The report of tho Public Trust Commission which was laid on the table of tho House today stated that there has been at tho head office of tho Public Trust an absolute want of proper or regular system up to the preueut

time in the conduct of its business ; that the books in the office have for years boon kept in a careless and unfinished manner; and that correspondence has been conducted in an unsatisfactory and irritating manner. They find that the system of audit accounts kept by the Audit Offioe has been in reality a delusion, and that many securities appeared year after year in returns as good for 20s in the £, and certified toby the Auditor-General as correct, although some of them bad long before been f uefosod by the Public Trustee and ipso facto ceased to exist. The charges made by the office are declared to have beon excessive. £IB,OOO was taken from the profits by the (Jolonial Treasurer, and the amount was improperly swollen by the sum of £3500. The Public Trustee is declared to have seldom done bis duty effectively in satisfying the claims of beneficiaries or persons entitled to participate in estates, the result being great injustice to the parties. The reversion to the colony of many thousands of pounds in the administration of many estates is proved to hare been imprudent and unwise, the beneficiaries being treated in a somewhat arbitary and crnel manner. The system of dealing with loans and mortgages is generally condemned. The Commissioners express themselves mnoh startled by the methods adopted in disposing of tho personal property in estates, as disclosed in evidence, as being not only improper and open to grave suspicions, but utterly indefensible and illegal.' They recommend that the management should be vested in the Public Trustee and Deputy-Trustee, with powers nearly equal, and both of large commercial and financial experience, and that there should bo an ordinary board of two commercial men of special knowledge.