BLACK MARKETING

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 138, 7 March 1942, Page 7

BLACK MARKETING

Extensive Operations In Europe (British Oflicial Wireless.) (Received March 6. 7.5 p.m.) RUGBY, March 5. Details of extensive black market operations in Germany and the occupied countries were given by a Ministry of Economic Warfare official. During the last three or four months the death penalty for offences against rationing and price control has been introduced in Germany and Holland and four persons, three Germans and one Czech, are known to have been executed. Others have been sentenced to long terms of -penal servitude with hard labour and heavy fines for illicit dealing in foodstuffs and tampering with ration cards.

In Europe as a whole black marketing is even more extensive. Radio Paris estimates that half the rationed and unrationed food in France passes through the black market. Many officials and mayors have been dismissed but the system nourishes and is often encouraged for reasons of personal gain by the Germans themselves. In Belgium operations are apparently even more open, as public notices about black markets have appeared.

More than 2000 sentences were passed in Holland in one recent month. In Italy illicit dealing in many commodities besides food is almost universal. Seven thousand cases were tried in one month and 1000 in another. There is, in fact, economic war between town and country. Fish, controlled at 2/6 a pound, fetched 22/to 25/-, while a goose is worth the equivalent of more than f 5. In France sugar, controlled at Id a pound, fetches 2/- in the black market. Similar examples were given for meat, potatoes and flour.