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Q.-Had Alves anything to do with the Rent Roll ?
A. Yes, that was Alves' book.
Q-You do not know when this Rent Roll was written up--whether he wrote it up daily or weekly?
A. No, I do not; but I find that he let it slip into considerable arrears. The column "Due for the year" could never be entered with absolute certainty because the Land Office did not send in its return for six months.
Mr. Thurburn.—Is there the same sort of thing for the taxes carried out by another man-a counterfoil and so on?
A. Yes, the same books (books produced). The system is a little different. The receipts are written entirely through before hand because it would take a long time writing them in when hundreds of people are clamouring to pay. The money is paid in, the receipt is chopped by the shroff, and I sign perhaps 50 of them in an afternoon and they are given to the people waiting outside. These are the receipts (produced). I can read both English and Chinese so that I can see that they are right.
The Chairman.---You think that the only way Alves defrauded the Treasury was by receiving money directly instead of going to the shroff, and then making out a false receipt which the shroff could not check because he did not understand English ?
A.-I think that is one of the ways, and another way was the falsifying of the shroff's receipt. In some cases we found that he tore out receipts at the end of the book. Here is a book of receipts (produced) in which he has torn out four pages, knowing, as he did, that the requirements for the year would not get as far as that.
He has forged the shroff's chop and never passed the money to the shroff at all.
Q-That is the way in which he embezzled the whole of the amount ?
A. Yes.
B
Q. When he embezzled only a part he falsified the receipt?
A.--Yes.
Q.--He got the shroff to sign for a smaller amount?
A.--He falsified the receipt after it came from the shroff.
Q.-First of all Alves made out a receipt. One half was in letters for a larger amount than the figures?
A. I don't know what he did with the letters.
Q.--You say that he would be able to fill in in letters a larger amount than the figures and as the shroff could not read letters he chopped for the figures he saw underneath?
A.--Yes.
Mr. Bird. You do not think the shroff could have been in collusion?
A.-I do not think so. I have not seen that he has displayed any uneasiness to be examined, and I have not heard of any suspicious circumstance. He is secured by a Chinaman and nothing has reached my ears about him being uneasy about him.
Mr. Thurburn.--Alves would not have forged the shroff's chop if he had been in collusion with him?
A.-No, I should think not.
Q.--Is the Auditor supposed to be there once a week, or at any stated time? A.--He is there from day to day very often, and then it happens that he may be away for a few weeks, and then up again for several days.
Mr. Bird.--He could do as he pleased? He had no stated hours?
A. He is his own master under Somerset House.
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