Sessional_Paper_1893 — Page 539

535

SIR,

Enclosure No. 2.

(Colonial Secretary to Messrs. Mitchell-Innes, Wodehouse and May.)

COLONIAL SECRETARY'S OFFICE,

HONGKONG, 11th April, 1893.

I am directed by the Governor to transmit confidentially, for your inform- ation, the enclosed copy of the Report of the Commission appointed to enquire into the defalcations in the Treasury, and to call upon you to shew cause why you should not be held pecuniarily responsible for the amounts shewn to have been

tenure

of the office of Treasurer.

misappropriated during your acting tenure

Pending the trial of ALVES, and the presentation of the Report to the Legis- lative Council, I am to desire you to consider the Report as strictly confidential.

I have the honour to be,

Sir,

Your most obedient servant,

The Honourable the COLONIAL TREASURER,

H. E. WODEHOUSE, Esq., C.M.G.

F. H. MAY, Esq.

G. T. M. O'BRIEN, Colonial Secretary.

SIR,

(Mr. F. H. May to Colonial Secretary.)

POLICE DEPARTMENT, CAPTAIN SUPERINTENDENT'S OFFICE, HONGKONG, 20th April, 1893.

I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your confidential letter of the 11th instant forwarding, for my information, a copy of the Report of the Commission appointed to enquire into the recently discovered defalcations in the Treasury, and calling upon me to shew cause why I should not be held pecuniarily responsible for the amounts misappropriated during my acting tenure of the office of Treasurer.

I find that the Commissioners state that they consider that I indirectly allowed the frauds to be committed because I did not carry out Mr. NICOLLE'S requirement as to the balancing of the book. By the book is meant the Rent Roll of 1890, and the Commissioners state that they think I was mistaken in saying in my evidence that Mr. NICOLLE referred to the Rent Roll of 1891 when he drew my attention to the delay in balancing a Rent Roll.

I can only repeat that I understood the Local Auditor to refer to the 1891 Rent Roll.

I did my best to get ALVES to balance that book, and as I found on enquiry that the Rent Roll of a previous year had never been balanced till the very end, at the earliest, of the subsequent year, I thought that the delay, though extremely undesirable, was not of an extraordinarily serious nature.