FRENCH OFFICER'S FORGERIES

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 280, 24 November 1921, Page 5

FRENCH OFFICER'S FORGERIES

BLAMES HIS SUPERIORS. EXTRADITION ORDERED. (Received 11.30 a.m.) , SYDNEY, this day. The hearing of a remarkable caEe has concluded, resulting in the Court ordering the extradition of a French officer, Eugene Lcgros. The evidence disclosed that a court-martial at Hanoi, in Annam, sentenced Legros to 20 years' penal servitude on charges of forgery and the embezzlement of large sums of money by means of overstating pay day due to soldiers on leave. Legros escaped from Hanoi in October, 1020, and came to Australia. The defence wa sthat he never handled the money, and only did what his superior officers told him, that they assisted him to escape, and gave him money to do so in order to hush up the matter. Further, he declared that one of the ( commandants at the Hanoi depot com-! niitted suicide after the discovery. He had several hundred thousand francs in the bank for wKieh he could not account, and declares that he came from Hongkong to Australia on the strength of information that a body had been foumi in a bag at Hanoi -which French officers had identified as his. Therefore he thought everything was right. The Court granted Legros the right of appeal to the Supreme Court against his extradition.— (A. and N.Z. Cable.)