GIGANTIC SWINDLE

Hokitika Guardian, 8 February 1929, Page 8

GIGANTIC SWINDLE

THE CASE OF MADAME HANAU. STARTED AS A REDTED. SUBTER R AXEAX FI NANCE. From hundreds of small towns and villages in ail parts of Franco are rising t!ie despairing cries of thousands o: small investors, who had been induced to part with their hard-earned savings on the extravagant promises of the agents o'f what is described as the greatest money swindle ol modern times. The brains behind this scheme we arc told, are chiefly Mme. Martinllanau and her divorced husband, Taznre Bloch, who are now under arrest charged with embezzling at leasi 1-1,000,000. According to some Paris correspondents of the British Press Madame Hanau is a dominating personality, fond of gaiety and night life but with an amazing faculty for serious business when it is to lie done. lln Paris correspondent of the London “ Daily Mail ” reports that her men victims say she is 35 years ol age. and good-looking, but her woman victims, who arc in a great majority, declare she is at least 45 and ugly. Actually it seems, she is 42, and this informant continues: “Just as in the Panama and Hum bert scandals, which shook the politico’ foundations of France, prominent deputies and senators are reported to have been concerned in Madame Hanau’s iinaucial operations. On tlio board ot Hie ‘Gazette du Franc et des Nations ’ Hie financial newspapers connected with the five companies she controlled, were prominent Radical leaders, including Pierre Audibert, formerly principal political secretary to Senator de Monzio, ex-Minister of Finance. an-t Bone (hist, who is a relative of General Boulanger. | “Certain Radical newspapers 'framed j nut their financial page to Madame llanau. She is said to have been paid more than £3OOO a year foi this. “ Madame Hanau and her ex-hus band started almost as pedlers. Mb'" they married in 100? they were livin' 111 reduced circumstances. It was 1101 until 1920 that, though then divorced they began their financial operations. “Tn her financial newspapers she recommended to an ever-growing public the various financial enterprises over which she exercised supreme control. The speculations, it was prophesied, might bring in dividends of as much as 10 per cent to the holders of shares. “Clients deposited gilt-edged securities with her, and it is stated that the majority of these have vanished Madame Hanau seemed unmoved by her arrest, and sent out at mid-day for a- substantial luncheon, which she shared with her- ex-husband. She readily answered all the Questions of the judicial authorities, and smiled amiably to the photographers who awaited her when she loft. The allegation is made that a certain amount of the original funds with which Madame llanau launched her enterprises was derived from foreign sources. It is commonly reported that Soveit gold lorined the basis of operations, and even that a certain amount of the profits went hack to Soviet Russia.” When taken to the police station, we read in a Paris dispatch to the Loudon “ Daily News,” Madame Hanau del'll suggested that “ masculine hostility It a woman, trespassing lor the first time in France on ground hitherto restricted to linin’s activities, accounted tor tin campaign which hankers and heads ol stockbroker concerns had carried on against her.” We read further that: “ It is the character and career ol this enigmatical woman rather than the alleged vast sums Involved, or the possible political complications, which mainly interest the Paris public to-day. “The circumstance that she retainei her divorced husband as her business partner is accounted for by Madame Hanau as evidence o'f the distinction she has habitually drawn between the home and the office. Mr Blech (sin has explained to her I fiends) ‘tailed her as a husband, hut as a business man she never had grounds lor doubting his fidelity.’ Hence the severance of one partnership and the continuance of the other. “The social and political power which, particularly in Erance, the possession ol great wealth impaits, is what Madame Hanau wanted, hoi friends asserted to-day. I hey declaie that a ‘ vague and misty pacifism ’ which coloured her political activities revealed a genuine emotion, and v..is, not, as the police suggest, merely a k iior her financial schemes. “Her career is rich in contrast. During the war, hovering in the rear of the Allied armies, she retailed itired soldiers a mixed drink ol rum and milk, while in the years following the Armistice she rapidly became a notable figure in subterranean finance in France. “ Her dominating personality made her more than a match for the male financiers with whom she (lashed during her hectic career. H was as a journalistic ‘saviour’ of thi* I'loneh currency that Madame Italian in 192 n first came under public notice. '1 he newspaper to champion the French franc, which she started modestly 111 one room, soon blossomed out into Ihi “Gazettet du Franc,” 'for which tlnmost eminent politicians in I'ranee and abroad were ready to write. “ From journalism her activities extended to finance, and in two years she ! started a group ol ' hanks ’ and linanj concerns with high-sounding titles, j jmd with ramifications throughout ! France. il: is asserted that she 0011- ! trolled 10(4 stock and share agencies in ! France, and that thousands of canvass - jers under her supervision were daily j ( ,|)nain>(| iu soliciting for her financial { schemes the savings of frugal peasants ! a I'd shopkeepers,”

In the, Paris “ Intransigeant ” L. Be.ilby recalls that about a year ago some sharks, through a twist 011 the Stock Exchange, were able to make a fortune in 24 hours, but be reminds us that the victims o'f Madame Hanau ivero “ modest civil servants, retired tradesmen, landlords who were only receiving the same rent as before the war, professors and magistrates who tried, poor devils, to add to their wretched budgets, wliic-h have been eaten up by the high cost of living.”