GERMAN NAVAL SCANDAL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9149, 23 July 1908, Page 3

GERMAN NAVAL SCANDAL.

extraordinary frauds at KIEL.

An extraordinary series of frauds, which have for years past been practised on the Imperial Dockyard at Kiel, have be. j n occupying the police for some weeks past, and the investigations are loading daily tomora and more astounding .revel- j atiuns. The persons implicated are parcly officials, some of them occupying high positions, and partly out' side merchants. The plan of operntio|iAp3 for those inside to pass outcffljbada of stores which were, schaduled for the use of definite | ships, bat were simply taken down | to the station and despatched to Berlin I and other places, where they hadA been sold. Ttio tots! amount of the thjt'ts must be something prodigious, as on one single day goods to the ■value ot .£2,000 were abstracted. One of the men in custody ia director of storehouses, who ha 3 been fifty-four years in public service, and •was decorated with the Red Eagle on attaining his jubilee. He has admitted defalcations now covered by ■the limitary provision, and it appears that he had been regularly preyed upon by certain of his accomplices, who blackmailed him fop large amounts. Another of the arcused is a scrap-iron merchant, who is believed to be worth a quarter of a million sterling. He used to buy used stores wholesale from tho yard, .and always receive 1 aoout twice as much as he was charged for. It is :said that his waggons to be sd loaded up with anything there might be an opportunity of getting out on them that they frequently broke down on the way to the station. The police have succeeded in confiscating £57,000 belonging to the, wealthiest participators in this land piracy. , A somewhat similar state of affairs seems to have existed" at the Wilhelmshaven Dockyard, but the thefts there were not of quite so wholesale a nature. Apparently, the business have ,been discovered if sortie intelligent police ..«flficfal in Berlin had not noticed that a merchant there whs in the'habit of selliruvropo, paints, and lu'iricants conslJJlably below the market price.