ITALIAN TRADE SCANDAL.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 14593, 1 May 1918, Page 4

ITALIAN TRADE SCANDAL.

SHAMELESS DEALINGS WITH THE| . ■ .ENEMY-.-""-. : .:, / ■■'*■■-.«. MILAtf, Fob. 26. ' A big scandal of- shameless, trading (vith the enemy has -been brdlight to light here. 1 'Ifor some 'tune-past the' H«me' Government .has had" information. that contraband b'usii'iiess ill' kilk andoottoiv shreds was being Earned- on > with Switzerland ori an exceptionally largescale from Upper Piedmont and Lombardy. . "': . The matter cama 'before Parliament a few days Ago, wheni the Minister oi j Finance gave as&uraricei? that' a stringent investigation, was pending, . becaiua© the main reasow m forbidding^he ' exportation of these .articles (Was ;that' they served as substitutes for the canvas' wings of aeroplanes, also for airships, and m the I manufacturte of bags for gun-charges. Two days later Cavaliere Gasti, head o£ tlie political department of the secret police at the ; Ministry of . the Intei'ior, came up (from the capital witli a large body of iagtents to; undertake a thorougli perqxusitioii! of the estaiblisliments "belong 1 - Ing to the Lombard Silk Thread. Conu pany, which lias its adminifitrative^ offices at Milan, Tvitlv spinning miJls at iNovara and: six other towns. • •- : The result of the inquiry shows that the ' company, whioh --possesses a nominal caipital of half a million sterling, with- a £200,000 reserve, had devised > cunning moans of maintaining an extensive trade with •..Genmany and Austria^ever since the Outbreak of the war. The directors, nearly all of whom are titled personages, created a pseudo-Slwies company at Zurich undei* the trade name of Gaamhandel. - x I The primary object of this scheme ■was ' to realise credits due from, customons m (Jermany on pre-war cohteacts: but under pressure from these .enemy clients who, i m liquidating outstanding' debts, stipu- j ated for new immediate.' tsuppHes,' the Zurich office befcame^quickly transformed into a huge olewringijjoxise' for Italian ■ silk produce destined foi I 'Gei-many. Some insight into the extent of this traffic is afforded toy. the. fact that cer- j tain expert members of the >Mila.n staff were transferred to Zurich under the pretext of offering their services to the pseudo-in dependent Garnhandel, which figured ac of purely Swiss origin., whilst the 'i Milan . central company's balancesheet during, the year 1916 alone reveals a net iprofit of £800,000 deprived from this single source. In the meantime another compaaiy, called the Floret Sfeiden Spinneret, iwas set up at Sagrad'o for tlie purpose of ■carrying on: similar operations with Aus-tria-Hungary. 7 Seven-eighths of its shareholders' capital turns out to belong to this same Lombard Spun Silk Company. . - Commendatore Francesco Gnecohi, president of , the board of directors, and Oommendati>re Prime Bonacossa, senior adviser, botJli of whom are Knight Commanders of the iCrown of Italy, have been arrested, and their private residences have been searched.