IN GERMAN PAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 165, 15 July 1939, Page 9

IN GERMAN PAY.

PARIS PRESS SCANDAL. 150 Journalists Reported To Be Implicated. TITLED WOMAN ESCAPED. United Press Association.—Copyright. (Received 10 a.m..i . PARIS, July 14. The Press scandal, caused by the arrest of M. Aubin, news editor of "Le Temps," and M. Loirier, a member of the advertising staff of the newspaper "Figaro," who allegedly received £56,000 and £200,000 respectively from a German source, is expected to assume considerable proportions. The police searched the homes of a number of persons believed to have contact with Herr von Ribbentrop and Dr. Goebbels. Further arrests can be expected. The "Paris Soir" states that 150 journalists are implicated. A beautiful Austrian Countess was the brains of the organisation, but she escaped to Germany. The Independent Cable Service says a network of Nazi bribery, intrigue and espionage, which in wartime might have brought a score of prominent Frenchmen before Military Courts to answer! for their lives, was bared last evening by France's famous anti-spy squad, the Second Bureau. At least 150 cases in which people are suspected of acting as the Nazis' propaganda agents are already being investigated. The first hint that a military swoop was pending came at the end of June when Henry R. Luce, proprietor and editor of the American magazine "Time," was sued by a syndicate of Paris journalists for publishing a report that Paris newspapers were receiving money from foreign countries and that the Paris Press was "the sewer of the world." / Luce apologised, but it is believed he had privately instructed his solicitors to prepare" evidence to fight the] case. The dossier of facts they collected was handed to the military authorities last week. The two newspaper executives who were arrested are being held at Cherche Midi Prison and are accused of acting as Nazi propaganda agents for the Press. * The arrests Mere followed by the expulsion from France of Otto Abetz. It is believed Abetz was the head of a German propaganda bureau originally started by Herr von Ribbentrop, now Nazi Foreign Minister, in his cham-pagne-selling days. He had an entertaining allowance of £2000 a month, and employed unsuspected women in society as go-betweens. M. Henri de Kerillis, the "Winston Churchill of France," declares that over £100,000 was spent by the Germans in propaganda payments during the Munich crisis.