CORRUPTION ALLEGED

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33654, 2 October 1974, Page 23

CORRUPTION ALLEGED

(.V.Z.P A Reuter— Copgrtijhtl BRUSSELS, Oct. 1. The "passive corruption"; trial of the former head of j Belgium’s State-run Tele-1 phone and Telegraph Authority. Germain Baudrin, has begun in Brussels. Baudrin is charged with obtaining 25 million francs (about 5486.750) by permitting excessive gains by private companies on R.T.T. | building contracts. He appears with his son. Michel, aged 26, who is alleged to have held a key position in one of the companies involved in the scandal that brought the resignation of a Junior Government Minister of Housing last year. Baudrin’s sister-in-law, Renee Springland, and two other people are also on trial. The case came to light [ when the R.T.T.’s chief! engineer, Mr Paul Demaegt, I said in a newspaper article I that the R.T.T. had lost | thousands of millions of i francs under Baudrin. The trial is expected to | last about a month, and a verdict returned towards the i end of the year. - ,4rt theft count Thieves stole 4594 works of art from Italian private homes, churches, and museums in the first six months of this year, according to the Department of Antiquities and Fine Arts in Rome. Hardest hit were private collectors, from whose homes 2280 works of art were stolen in 167 thefts. Next came churches, with 138 thefts, and then local and State museums.—Rome, Oct. 1.