A judgment which will, without doubt, have its repercussions the business world of Shanghai was delivered niorning, by Judge in the case in which A. Ber-bunger and E. Leyet, partner and departmental manager of the defunct Han Yung Ca., were charged that, having by various documents called trust receipts obtained possession of goods belonging and/or pledged to the Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation, and having undertaken to hold the goods and/or the proceeds.of the sale thereof, they fraudulently misap-Propriated the proceeds of the sale, to the total value of approximately Tis, 16,000, contrary to Article 301 "the Provisional Criminal Cod and alternatively, that by means trust receipts -obtained possession of the said goods and, having undertaken to administer the sale as agents for the complainants, they fraudulently, in breach of their duty, sold the goods and misappropriated the proceeds without accounting for the same to the complainants, contrary to Article 386 of the Provisional Criminal Code.
Mr. J. E, Badeley appeared for the Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation, and defendants were represented by Dr. 0. Fischer, and Messrs. Y. C, Linn and S. Y. Yeh, The Judgment as follows:—The judgment of the Court was sit appears that the first accused, A. Berblinger, has for many years been trading in Shanghai as an importer of German goods, under the name or style of The Han Yung Trading Company, and the second accused was a departmental manager of the said company, and was given power to sign documents in the absence of the first accused. Part of the company's business was that of indenting for goods ie. when the company received an order from a Chinese purchaser, the com-Pany would approach a bank and ask it to make an advance of money for financing the shipment of the goods needed to be ordered from Germany, and the bank, if it consented, would then instruct their branch office in Germany to advance the necessary sum to the branch office of the accused's company in Germany. In consideration of such advances, the shipping documents would then be hypothecated to the bank as collateral security, and a Dill of exchange would be drawn upon the'aceused: when the grads arrived in Shanghai, the accused would accept, the bill of exchange, would' mature of a certain date afterwards, and the bank would then hand over the shipping [documents to the actased, who, in return, would sign a new, and further, document, popularly known a "trust receipt."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.