TREASURY FRAUDS.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17740, 17 April 1923, Page 9

TREASURY FRAUDS.

MARSEILLES SCANDAL. REVEALED BY CLERK'S ERRORS (BT CABLE—FBESS ASSCCIiTIOS—CQfTBIQHT.) AND N.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION) (Received April 10th, 8.15 p.m.) PARIS, April IG.

The frauds at Marseilles will prove to be of the greatest of post-war scandals. Investigations show the ever widening extent of the frauds, while the high professional standing of the accused is adding to the public excitement. It is now estimated that, the State had been defrauded of at least twenty-two million francs.

The affair was discovered through the trifling error of a clerk who received from a body claiming to represent disabled soldiers a request for a medical coupon book in the name of ono of its members. Instead of sending the coupons to the society the clerk sent the book to the soldier's private ad-d-with the request that he would acknowledge receipt. • The soldier replied that he never had asked for coupons, and never Had been ill. " It w» a then found that many members of tho society were receiving medical attention when they had been dead for some time, while living members had an abnormal record of ill-health. Many when questioned, denied that they ever had been ill or wen knew of the existence of the society which apparently recruited its members by merely putting their names on a register. Its agents accosted ex-soldiers at veterans' meetings, and thus got enough information to fill lip the Government papers.

It now has been found that thro© societies have been working this plan and sharing the profits with certain doctors aiul chemists. Often ex-sol-diers were given tubes of tooth-past© and boxes of soap in exchange when applying for prescriptions containing sevonty-eiglit francs worth of drugs.

[A previous message saidThirtyfour Marseilles doctors have been arrested for defrauding the French Treasury of £430,000. louring the wftr they filled in voucher forms relating to imaginary sick and wounded soldiers, ancl thus secured payments for treatment and medicine ranging from twenty to five hundred francs per case. A number of chemists hay© also been charpred with ■ presenting fraudulent vouchers in connexion with three thousand expensive prescriptions for phantom patients.]