GAOL FOR SWINDLER

Southland Times, Issue 21265, 11 December 1930, Page 8

GAOL FOR SWINDLER

SEVEN YEARS’ SENTENCE. FRANCIS LORANG’S CAREER. ' London, November 26. Francis Lorang, ex-director of the Bluebird enterprises, has been sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude for’his crimes, which involved heavy losses to numerous people. Accused was arrested at a Montmartre night club, where he was dining with two women, on charges.of fraudulent conversion of sums amounting to £317,000 and publishing a false statutory report. Mr Justice Swift said Lorang had caused a terrible disaster to his companies and the people interested m them. Commercial life could not continue if he went unpunished. Lorang, who during the retirement of the jury smoked a cigarette and chatted with the warders below the dock, seemed dazed at the Court’s decision. Accused’s father was a Luxembourg baker. Lorang himself was penniless after the war, and was compelled to pawn his mackintosh. He purchased a Surrey manor after the flotation of the Bluebird companies, when he was “swimming in money.”

Francis Lorang was founder and chairman of the Bluebird group of petrol companies, which crashed in May, 1929. He left England at the end of that month and took refuge in Luxembourg, of which he was reputed to be a citizen, and which has no extradition agreement with Britain. He paid a flying visit to Paris, and was. he said, betrayed by a woman.