MILLIONARE'S SAFES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 7 January 1928, Page 5

MILLIONARE'S SAFES.

$ A GDG ANTIC FRAUD. PAPER. FOR GOLD. Inquiries made bv the Paris police, at- the request of the Hungarian Minister, into a vast affair >jf fraud in Hungarian deist bonds, in connection with which three important arrests have been made in Paris, promise to lead to sensational developments. Investigations are also being conducted by the police Great Britain and Germany, to which countries a gang of swindlers is reported to have smuggled a considerable number of Hungarian bonds on which the interest was to be paid in paper crowns, and to have forged the necessary stamps to turn them into bonds payable in gold crowns in foreign countries. Four safes, which belonged to the Viennese banker, Joseph Blumcnstein, now under arrest, were forced upon yesterday by the police, the prisoner having refused to hand the keys to the investigating magistrate. Thirty million francs worth of Hungarian debt bonds were discovered in them.

Many of them were found to have been more or less grossly transferred into bonds payable in gold crowns. The banker Blumenstein, who was living in a luxurious Paris hotel with his wife and two children, is said to belong t,o a wealthy family of Vienna bankers, and to have a fortune of 15,000,000 dollars. He is 50 years of age. His . two companions in custody (at first, described as Rumanian and Italian) are really two Russian brothers named Simon and Boris Tovbini, born at Odessa.

While inspectors were searching Simon Tovbini’s apartment the telephone bell rang. Simon was about to taKo the receiver when a detective stopped him, saying, “Let me answer that call.’’ “Is that you Tovbini? This is Blumenstein speaking," said the voice in the 'phone. The inspector gave no reply, and hung up the receiver as if the communication had been accidentally interrupted. As Tovbini, replying to a. question from the inspector, said he did not know who Blumenstein was, the police official rang up the telephone exchange and found out that the mysterious caller had telephoned from a new and luxurious hotel in the Boulevard Haussmann.

Ten minutes later the inspector was at the hotel, and asked M. Blumenstein to accompany him to police headquarters —which he left a few hours later for the prison depot.