CO129-590-11 Commission of Enquiry into irregularities in Immigration Departments 22-4-1941 - 19-12-1941 — Page 47

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in the extreme, being merely a series of debit and credit

books which dould be kept by any intelligent person. As will

be seen later, this system was only partially carried out.

Deposit receipt forms, especially designed for immigratio

purposes, were then prepared by mutual agreement between

myself and the Immigration Officer and with the Cash Books

already recommended there seemed to be no reason why everything

should not run smoothly. The Immigration Officer was allocated

the services of Mr. A.J.G. Taylor, an officer of the S.C.& A.S.

with accounting experience, as an Assistant Immigration Officer,

but he chose to send him as officer-in-charge at Taipo rather

than to utilize his services for the supervision of the

accounts in their early stages.

The

But never once during all these preliminary discussions

did the Immigration Officer give me any indication of the

many thousands of applications he would receive, nor the

hundreds and maybe thousands of deposits he would have to take

each day. And things began to go wrong from the outset.

department accepted fees from applicants at the time of

application for a permit without the issue of a receipt and such

sums were not brought to account in any way. At one time the

Immigration Officer informed me that his safe was full of money

to an unknown amount belonging to unknown persons and that

various drawers in the office were similarly full. Amounts

were paid into Treasury without adequate supporting details

as to what they represented. I recall in particular an

amount of just over $20,000 paid in by the Immigration Officer

for the credit of deposit accounts although he was admittedly

unable to state from whom it had been received and consequently

to whom it should be repaid. It must have represented nearly

one thousand different individuals. Details of the serial

numbers of deposit receipts issued and brought to account

from time to time in the Treasury disclosed gaps which were