FRENCH SCANDAL

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18634, 19 February 1935, Page 7

FRENCH SCANDAL

£2,500,000 CONCERNED BANKER ON TRIAL PARIS, Doc. 15. Another financial scandal, in which the public is alleged to have been defrauded of £2,500,000— roughly the amount involved in the Stavisky case —was revealed to-day. The frauds are alleged to have been committed during the last 20 years by Johannes Moeller, a Danish banker, who has been arrested at his house near Grasse, on the Riviera. The further allegation is made tonight that when Moeller was about to be expelled from France in 1926, he paid a former Cabinet Minister, who was also a lawyer, nearly £IOOO, and that the expulsion proceedings were then dropped. Moeller, who is to be brought here for trial, came to France in 1912, and founded the Paris Bank of Scandinavian Countries. Shortly afterwards he opened the Franco-Seandinavian Bank.

Two years ago, when all the banks had been declared bankrupt, n number of complaints were made, and an investigation was opened. The _ accountant charged with the examination of the books was faced by such a complicated task that he, has only now finished his labors.

The details of the alleged frauds have not yet been disclosed, but Moeller is said to have persuaded the municipalities to hand him over for nothing a magnificent property formerly belonging to the Rothschilds. This property had been presented to the town of Grasse by a member of the Rothschild family. It is being asked in the press how it was possible for Moeller to obtain control over it.