Day 080 - 30 Jan 95 - Page 53
1 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Could you keep your voice up again?
2 A. Sorry, sir. I am thinking my way through it.
3
4 MS. STEEL: Would Mr. Rampton stop speaking so loudly, please.
5 A. It is very difficult, you see, to relate an order to an
6 invoice because the order is for 30 tonnes, but you can see
7 straightaway from the invoices that when it comes in off a
8 ship it comes in at different weights. But an order is not
9 30 tonnes to the pound; it could be 29 tonnes and 100
10 weight or it could be 31 tonnes. I can see what you are
11 trying to do. You are trying to find the invoice that
12 relates as near as possible to that 30 tonnes.
13
14 Q. Well, on page 15 of the older set of documents you have got
15 an invoice dated 8th of the 12th 1983, and I think that
16 that was the third consignment?
17 A. No. The order did not go out until 1984, so it cannot
18 be invoiced on 8th of the 12th 1983.
19
20 Q. What is that an invoice for then? Is that for another
21 consignment, a different consignment?
22 A. It must be. There only appears in my bunch of
23 documents to have one purchase -- no, I have found another
24 one. There was only 83 tonnes altogether.
25
26 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If you look at document 6 it has a price on
27 it of 60.5 which, for instance, is the price on page 18,
28 £60.50. Then you have got -- what is the MCA £7.50?
29 A. Yes, that would not be -- that is 7.50 old pence, sir,
30 giving a total in delivered price of £68.08 as MCA was
31 payable on balance sheet.
32
33 Q. What I suggest you do, it seems to me that Mr. Walker at
34 the moment cannot relate one document to another and so
35 on. If you have a suggestion to make, what I suggest is
36 you put that. If, for instance, you are going to ask, "Was
37 there an extra 30 tonnes which we cannot find accounted for
38 in the documents we had originally?" then put that.
39 Whether some future witness ties it up or not I do not
40 know, but Mr. Walker no doubt understands his own business
41 but cannot expect to be the accounts clerk as well
42 necessarily. So if you suspect as a result of that a
43 certain state of affairs, what I suggest is put the state
44 of affairs to him, see what his answer is and we will see
45 whether it is cleared up later.
46
47 MS. STEEL: First, if you put in an order for beef, for this
48 beef, how long after that order would it arrive -- a few
49 days?
50 A. A few days.
51
52 Q. A few days?
53 A. If it was in bond, yes.
54
55 Q. Then how long after the delivery would you get the invoice?
56 A. 28 days.
57
58 Q. 28 days later?
59 A. Yes. What has just been said I understand very
60 clearly, and I tell you that there were 83 tonnes. What
