FRENCH TRIAL ENDS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 98, 20 January 1936, Page 10

FRENCH TRIAL ENDS

Madame Stavisky Acquitted

NINE FOUND GUILTY

Paris, January 17.

Madame Stavisky aud nine others accused of complicity in the Stavisky fraud were acquitted. Others were found guilty with extenuating circumstances.

Those convicted are the ex-Mayor ot Bayonne, M. Joseph Garat; Deputy Gaston Bonnaure, General Bardi de Fourtou; au insurance official, Paul Guebiu; Controller of the Bayonne Pawnshop, Gustave Tissier; a jewellery appraiser, Henri Cohen; theatre director, Henri Hayotte; and also M. Stavisky’s henchmen, Raoul Desbrosses aud Georges Hatot. The sentences ou Tissier and HayOtte are seven years’ imprisonment; on Desbrosses and Guebin, five years; and on Garat, Cohen, Hatot, Fourtou, two years. Bonnaure was treated as a first offender and escapes sentence. All were ordered to pay 100 francs fine and costs. Civil suits against the defendants will begin on January IS. Other acquittals besides that ot Madame Stavisky, were four editors. JIM. Aymard, Levy, Dubarry and Darius, the lawyers Ribaud and Gautier, Police Inspector Sigoiu, Stavisky’s lieiiebinen, Depardon ami Romaguino. and the jewellery appraiser. Farault.

Twenty of Stavisky's associates-, defended by 50 lawyers against charges the reading of which occupied the whole of the first day of the trial, were recently indicted in Paris. There were 270 witnesses. Stavieky organised a series of gigantic frauds involving sums estimated at £3.000.000, chiefly by the issue of forged municipal pawnshop bonds in Orleans an Bayonne. Stavisky himself disappeared in January, 11)34. and was found shot in his villa at Chamonix when he was on the point of being arrested. The subsequent investigations involved many figures in public life, leu to riots aud disturbances, and culminated iu a trial oulv after IS months of preparation.