EXCHANGE CONTROL BREACHES

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25160, 16 April 1947, Page 7

EXCHANGE CONTROL BREACHES

BRITISH INVESTIGATIONS IN FRANCE

LONDON, April 14. A near panic is reported to be spreading through the luxury hotels of tne French Riviera as British Treasury and Scotland Yard officials develop their investigations into currency smuggling. Holiday-makers, cut off from their black market sources of francs, are preparing to return home, not knowing whether, when they arrive in Britain, they will ioin the hundreds already summoned on currency charges. Exchange control in Britain limits purchases of foreign currency to what is required for essential imports, or for sustenance and, in general, it prevents the transfer of capital abroad without the consent of the British Treasury. At least 2000 cases of suspected infringement of the currency regulations by British subjects abroad are being investigated.

Investigations into foreign currency dealings based in London are also in progress, and arrests of big dealers are expected soon. There have already been a number of heavy fines, and to-day at Bow relent’ . Magistrate fined a woman t-bou on three summonses alleging that she issued cheques in France contrary to the currency regulations. The two cheques which she cashed were made payable to Max Intrator. Intrator a currency black marketeer, who operated m France, is now in the Paris gaol awaiting trial as the chief of an international currency smuggling ring. •JEl^ ency .® v ? Bi p n s British subjects are said to have cost the British Treasury £10,000,000 in one year, since the war.