DEATH PENALTY
FOR BLACK MARKETING IN EUROPE EXTENSIVE DEALINGS IN MANY COUNTRIES. THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE SENTENCED. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, March 5. Details of extensive black market operations in Germany and the occupied countries were given by a Ministry of Economic Warfare official. During the last three or four months the death penalty for offences against rationing and price control has been .introduced in Germany and Holland, and four persons, three Germans and one Czech, are known to have been executed. Others have been sentenced to long terms of penal servitude with hard labour and heavy fines for illicit dealing in foodstuffs and tampering with ration cards. In Europe as a whole black marketing is even more extensive. The Paris Radio estimates that half the rationed and unrationed food in France passes through the black market. Many officials and mayors have been dismissed, but the system flourishes and is often encouraged for reasons of personal gain by the Germans themselves. In Belgium operations are apparently even more open, as public notices about black markets have appeared. More than 2000 sentences were passed in Holland in one recent month. In Italy illicit dealing in many commodities besides food is almost universal. Seven thousand cases were tried in one month, and 1000 in another. There is, in fact, economic war between town and country. Fish, controlled at 2s 6d a pound, fetched 22s to 255, while a goose is worth the equivalent of more than £5.
In France, sugar, controlled at 4d a pound, fetches 2s in the black market. Similar examples were given for - meat, potatoes and flour.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 March 1942, Page 3
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267DEATH PENALTY Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 March 1942, Page 3
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