GIGANTIC SWINDLE

Hokitika Guardian, 16 February 1929, Page 8

GIGANTIC SWINDLE

THE CASE OF MADAME HAN AIL From hundreds of small towns and villages in all parts of Franco are rising tire despairing crio,* of thousands of small investors who- had been induced 10 part with their hard-earned savings on the- extravagant promises of the agents of what is described as the greatest money swindle of modern times. The brains behind this scheme, we are told, are chiefly Mine. Marthe Hanau and her divorced husband, Lavare Bloch, who are now under arrest charged with embezzling at least £l,OOO,COD. 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 bust lies when it is to be done. The Paris corespondent of the London Daily Mail reports that her men victims say she is 35 years of age and good-looking, but her women victims wno 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 Humbert scaudas, which shook the political foundations of France, prominent deputies and senators are reported to nave I seen concerned in Madam Hanau’s financial operations. On the board of the Gazette du Frame et des Nations, the financial newspaper connected with tlie five companies -she controlled, were prominent Radical leaders, including Pierre Audibcrt, formerly principal po’itieal secretary of Senator de MOll- - es-Mini.star of Finance, and Bene Hast, who is a relative of General Boulanger. “Certain Radical newspapers farmed out their iinancial page to Madame Hanau. She is said to have been paid moie than £301)0 a year lor this. “Madame Hanau and her husband started almost as pedlars. When they married in 1003 they were living in reduced circumstances. It was not until 1 !;„() that, though then divorced, they began their financial operations. “In her financial newspaper she recommended to an ever-growing public

various financial enterprise.* over which she exercised supreme control. Tin* speculations, it was prophesied, might bring in dividends of as much as 40 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 Wiui her ex-husband. She. readily answered all the questions of the judicial authorities, and smiled amiably to the photographers who awaited her when she lefo. The allegation is made that a‘certain amount of the original funds with which Madame Hanau launched her enterprises was derived trout foreign sources. ]t is commonly reported that Soviet gold formed tlie basis of operations, and even that a certain anion tit- of the profits went hack to Soviet Russia.”

When taken to the police station, we read in a Paris despatch to the London Daily News, Madame Hanau deftly suggested that “masculine hostility to a woman, trespassing for the first time iu France on ground hitherto restricted to man’s activities, accounted for the campaign which hankers and heads of stockbroker concerns had carried on against her,” We read further that: • Llt is the character and career ci this enigmatical woman rather tiithe alleged vast sums involved, or the possible political complications, which mainly interest the Paris public today. •‘'file circumstances that she retained her divorced husband as her business partner is accounted for by Madame Hanau as evidence of the distinction she has liahitualy drawn between the home and the office. Mr Bloch (she has explained to her friends) ‘failed iter as a husband, hut as a. business men she never had grounds far doubting his fidelity.’ Hence the severance of one partnership and the continuance of the other.

“Tlio social and jsolitical power which, particularly in France, the pascession of groat wealth imparts, in what Madame Hanan wanted, her friends asserted to-day. They declare that a ‘vague and misty pacifism’ which coloured her political activities revealed a. genuine emotion, and was not, as police suggest, merely a cloak for he: financial schemes. “Her career is rich in contrast. During the war, hovering in the rear of the Allied armies, .she retailed to tired soldiers a mixed drink of rum and milk, while in the years following tile Armistice she rapidly became a notable figure in .subterranean finance in France. “Her dominating personality made her move than a match for Ihe male financiers with whom she had clashed during nor hectic career. It was

journalistic ‘.saviour’ of the French currency that Madame Hanan in J92d lirst came under public, notice. The franc, which she started modestly in one room, soon blossomed out into the Gazette* du France, for which the most eminent politicians in France and abroad were ready to write. “From journalism her activities extended to finance, and in two years sh started a gnnlpe of ‘hanks’ and financial concerns with high-sounding titles, with ramifications throughout France. Tt is asserted that she controlled -100 stock and share agencies in France, and that thousands of canvassers under her supervision were daily engaged in soliciting for her financial schemes the savings of frugal peasants and shopkeepers.” In the Paris Intransigent L. Thiilhy recalls that about a year ago some sharks, through a twist on the Stock Exchange, were able to make a fortune

in. 21 hours, but he reminds us that idle victims ol Madame Hanau wi "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 midgets, which have been eaten up by tho high cost of living.”