Court of Criminal Appeal
| DOI | 10.1177/002201835501900103 |
| Published date | 01 January 1955 |
| Date | 01 January 1955 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Court of
Criminal
Appeal
FRAUD BY DIRECTOR: MEANING OF
'PUBLIC
COMPANY'
AND
TRANSFER OF
'PROPERTY'
R.
v. Davies
IT is surprising
that
the first point of law raised in R. v.
Davies (1954, 3 W.L.R. 664) has not been previously settled
in the criminal courts for it is of considerable importance in
connection with fraudulent acts by directors of companies.
S. 20
(I)
(ii) of the Larceny Act, 1916 provides
that
every
person who is a director, member or officer of any body
corporate or public company and "fraudulently takes or
applies for his own use or benefit, or for any use or purposes
other than the use or purposes of such body corporate, any of
the
property of such body corporate or public company" shall
be guilty of a misdemeanour.
What
exactly is a public
company for the purposes of this section? A commercial
lawyer can readily distinguish for his purposes between a
public and aprivate company,
but
is this distinction necessarily
in point?
The
managing director of a company registered
under
the
Companies Act, 1949 as a private company was charged inter
alia
under
this section as a
"director
of a certain public
company" with fraudulently converting
"the
property of the
public company
and
applying it to the use of a finance
company". He induced the finance company to enter into a
hire-purchase agreement with
the
company of which he was a
director, representing
that
the company had purchased a
number
of tractors. No tractors had in fact been bought
but
the
finance company paid cheques to
the
managing director,
the
appellant, and these he paid into his own private banking
account.
Later
he paid two instalments due, or alleged to be
due,
under
the hire-purchase agreement to thefinance company
out of the funds of his company
and
these payments were the
subject of the charge
under
section 20
(I)
(ii).
Expressing the
judgment
of the
Court
(Lord
Goddard,
C.J., Lynskey
and
Ormerod n.), the
Lord
Chief Justice said
42
To continue reading
Request your trial