PEACE HAS HER SPIES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21244, 27 January 1931, Page 16

PEACE HAS HER SPIES.

Recently reference was made to the I. G. Farben Industrie’s (German Dye Trust) activities abroad during the trial at Dusseldorf of three chemists charged with betraying to foreign agents certain secret processes of the German chemical industry (writes Reuter’s correspondent at Cologne, Germany, in November last). Counsel for one of the defendants asked a witness if he was aware that the I. G. Farben Industrie did business abroad with its dyestuff patents, and that the Baden aniline works, one of the trust’s subsidiary companies, had sold patents, which were of great importance for the defence of Germany, to foreign countries. He further asked if he knew that the I. 6. Farben Industrie was connected with a British group and an American oil company. Theie questions caused counsel representing the I. G. Farben Industrie to protest that matters were being published which were the secrets of the trust directors.

At a later stage the head of the AntiEspionage Department maintained by the I. G. Farben Industrie revealed that his department’s card index contained the names of 18,000 persons of foreign nationality who traffic in secret industrial processes.

The three accused chemists —Dr Biintrock. Dr List, and Dr Jonsen —are all over CO years of age. The two latter maintained that they had furnished Dr Buntrock with formulae, to which they had access, for publication only in the technical journal which he edited. Dr Buntrock, however, appears to have sold them to a German-American named Guido Meissel, of Portsmouth, U.S.A. Meissel, ( with two other men, was sentenced to a terra of imprisonment at Dusseldorf in 1928. At that time Buntrock was “ wanted,” but fled to Czechoslovakia. He was arrested in Germany last year. At the conclusion of the trial Dr Buntrock, the principal defendant, was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment and fined £100; Dr Jonsen to three months’ imprisonment and fined £l5O. Judgment against Dr List has not yet been pronounced.