A CAREER OF CRIME

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1013, 29 February 1912, Page 4

A CAREER OF CRIME

The corruption which marks the Russian secret police is well illustrated by the career of oue of the agents, whose arrest in Pans is reported by Reuter. Thief, forger, blackmailer, and trader iu vice, this man has for many years flourished on the money and authority supplied to him by the St. Petersburg Okhrana (secret police). Asa youth, the son of a rich merchant, he stole money and valuables from his school fellows, and forged his father's name on various financial documents. He fled abroad and found congenial employment in the foreign section of the Russian secret police, being first entrusted to “observe the activity” of Russian revolutionaries in Geneva.

In 1905, however, he was arrested aud expelled from Switzerland on account of his attempts to bribe postmen to hand over to him letters addressed to Russian immigrants. But his services were too valuable to be lost to the Okhrana, and he obtained posts in Berlin aud Vienna. The German and Austrian authorities discovered that he traded in vice by means of spurious advertisements lor chorus girls. He was arrested by the Vienna police for blackmail, aud sentenced to several months’ imprisonment.

In 1906 be went to St. Petersburg, proposed that he should “supervise” the revolutionaries, and obtained money from the Union of the Russian People. The next few years he spent iu similar undertakings abroad, and on returning to St. Petersburg in 1909 gave a lurid description to his Okhrana chiefs of a vast “terroristic plot” which was being hatched abroad by Russian immigrants. This proved spurious, but he was retained for some mouths longer iu the foreign department of the Okhrana. At the beginning of this year he visited Brussels, aud extracted £2OO from the Russian Minister for the objects of the political police. He also made the acquaintance of a rich Englishwoman, to whom he described himself as the chief of the Russian secret police. He got from her a large sum of money and mauy valuables, aud then disappeared. The agent was next heard of iu Paris, where be was given large sums by “high-placed personages temporarily stopping there,” ostensibly lor revealing the names of the participators in an organised “great terroristic act.” The Russian Embassy secured his arrest by the Paris police, aud he will now be brought to trial.