STAVISKY FRAUDS

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 6 November 1935, Page 6

STAVISKY FRAUDS

W|dow Faces Court on Charges of Complicity

CLIMAX TO INVESTIGATION JUDGE TRACES CAREER 'United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph Copyright). Receiver 3 p.m. to-day. PARIS, Nov. 5. “The shadow of Stavisky’s corpse will dominate the trial,” said the judge, M. Bernaud, in summarising Stavisky’s frauds at the opening ot the trial ol Arlette Stavisky, his widow. Nineteen men are also accused of complicity. There is in the trial the climax to twenty months’ investigation of one of the biggest modem frauds. The reading of the indictment occupied two hours, despite the omission of 1956 questions, which are being submitted to the jury. A total of 270 witnesses have been summoned, including the ex-Premiers MM. Daladier and Chautemps, also M. Chiappe, ex-police chief. Fifty counsel are engaged. Arlette Stavisky, fashionably dressed in mourning, with her black hair dressed in the latest style, originally faced the court calmly, but she crouched on a wooden' bench weeping and shaken by sobs. She was comforted by her counsel’s arm about her shoulders as M. Bernaud mercilessly traced Stavisky’s career from the time of starting a night club with an elderly woman, whose jewels lie stole, to the Bayonne swindles and his suicide. He declared that Stavisky was a glamorous swindler—a crooked megalomaniac—who cheated from love of ostentation and luxury, possessing a personality sufficient to involve prominent people in. his machinations, resulting in the dock being filled with once respected editors and politicians. M. Bernaud then began questioning the accused, which he intimated would occupy a week.