SMUĜLING OF GOLD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17234, 9 August 1919, Page 2 (Supplement)

SMUĜLING OF GOLD.

TRAFFIC WITH GERMANY.

FRENCH POLICE DISCOVERT. i Th© French police have discovered that for some time past a gang has been smuggling gold across the Franco r frontier, as much aa £8000 in gold being thus spirited into Italy in return for Italian ; banknotes. The Matin states that this gold is passed on into Germany. A man named Grassi is one of the ringleaders in this illicit traffic. He had under him a snail army of collectors, who in their turn employed cafe and hotel 1 waiters, horse dealers, and men whose ordinary vocation takes them through country cßsfcricta to tout for gold. Peasant hoarders were offered as much as 50 per cent, gasn if they would hand over their gold for French banknotes. Bordeaux, Biarrita, Toulouse, Avignon, and Marseilles were regularly worked, the intermediaries ia the case of towns being generally seooad-hand art and jewellery dealers. The centre on the Italian side is in Turin, and i* is reckoned to have received since the armistice about £20,000 ia gold. AH sorts of tricks.are employed to get money over the frontier. Grassi did not despise the methods of the old cargo runners, and owes his arrest to the fact that an Englishman had his suspicions aroused