FUSED AS PAUPER.

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20260, 31 July 1937, Page 9

FUSED AS PAUPER.

BUT HAD £200,000. A CIL\RGE OF FRAUD. (Times Air Mail Service.) LONDON, July 7. SeJgmund Bosel. once the richest man in Austria, stood in a Vienna dock to-day charged with defrauding the Austrian Post Office Savings Bank of £700,000. and with a false declaration of poverty when actually he had £200,000 concealed by a double account system (says the Vienna correspondent of the Daily Herald). Bosel, a banker, made immense profits out of exchange operations after the war. At the age of 30 he was the richest man in Austria. But when he speculated on the fall of the franc in 1924, he went bankrupt. He had borrowed £700.000 from the savings bank but, when brought

before a tribunal, he swore on oath that he was a poor man and could not repay. He held great properties partly in the names of two women friends and partly through Swiss firms. To deceive the Austrian authorities he maintained a double system of accounts. one for the public and one for himself.