FRENCH BETTER ACQUITTED

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32846, 21 February 1972, Page 9

FRENCH BETTER ACQUITTED

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) PARIS. The hero of France’s small punters, “Monsieur X,” 51-year- , old Patrice des Moutis, last Thursday won his 10-year-old duel with the Government betJting organisation, P.M.U. (Pari Mutuel Urbain) when a Paris Court cleared him and about 80 alleged accomplices of a $642,800 I fraud. “Justice has triumphed,” said I the urbane Mr des Moutis as his friends pushed back the thronging reporters and photographers outside the court. The alleged fraud involvede a trotting race at Vincennes on December 9, 1962. which the P.M.U. had chosen as the "tierce" race. Five million French punters, as usual each week, tried to pick the three placegetters—in finishing order for the top payout, and in any order for the lesser payout.

It was on this tierce (France’s equivalent of Britain football pools) that "Monsieur X,” a newspaper tipster, civil engineer, brilliant mathematician from France’s elite I’Ecole Centrale—and the surviving 80 or so of his original 85 co-accused, are said to have won 5642.800. The P.M.U. promptly blocked payment on the grounds des Moutis had conspired with the others to get around regulations • which limit each tierce better to 20 tickets.

They claimed that Mr des Moutis had sent his friends to P.M.U. betting shops in various parts of France with orders to stake large sums on his chosen combination of horses. Though singly each of his "accomplices” did not end up with more than 20 winning tickets, collectively they and Mr des Moutis had broken the law—if it could be proved to have been a conspiracy organised by and for “Monsieur X.”

The P.M.U. failed to prove a conspiracy, so there was no fraud.

Now, unless it appeals, the P.M.U. has to pay out the longdelayed winnings to Mr des Moutis and his friends, of whom several have died since the litigation began in 1962

What hurts the P.M.U., and particularly its now retired head

and inventor of the tierce, Mr Andre Carrus, aged 73, is that "Monsieur X,” even before 1962, had extracted more than $300,000 from the P.M.U. by playing the tierce intelligently and massively—betting in thousands. Mr Carrus complained that the small punters, for whom he said the tierce was benevolently designed. were losing out because of Mr des Moutis and his bigscale bets which forced down horses’ prices and thus reduced the pay-out to all tierce winners. To most French newspapers and many small punters it was a case of sour grapes on the part of Mr Carrus and the P.M.U.