GREEK GOVERNMENT ARRESTS AMERICAN FINANCIER AT REQUEST OF UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 342, 28 August 1933, Page 6

GREEK GOVERNMENT ARRESTS AMERICAN FINANCIER AT REQUEST OF UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

CENTRAL FIGURE IN ONE OF THE MOST EXTRAOR-

DINARY CASES OF CENTURY

Was the Man Behind Big Bill Thomson in Chicago

Press Association-Copyright. Athens, August 26. SAMUEL INSULL, the American financier, has been arrested at the request of the United States Government. The Greek Government fzzt D: :mber decided not to allow Insull to be extradited.

Insull is the central figure in one of the most extraordinary cases of the century. Insull, a London boy who went to the United States at the request of Thomas A. Edison and who organised the coal, gas, and electric power companies over a huge area, was finally at the head of a huge corporation worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The announcement that his great Middle West Utilities Corporation would pass into the hands of receivers meant that a new record had been established in slump failures. Middle West is the largest company ever to suffer this fate in the United States.

The power and wealth of Insull were almost legendary. He was the real “boss” of Chicago, the man behind the anti-British Mayor Big Bill Thompson. He was a prime mover in the establishing of the great Chicago Opera House, where Galli-Curci made her American debut. He employed as his political agent no less a person than Mr. Owen D. Young, author of the Young Plan. His interests reached everywhere, and his paper profits were great. He organised holding company after holding company, pyramiding his holdings up to the two great trusts, Middle West Utilities with its £500,000,000 capital and Insull Utility Investments with an investment total of £50,000,000. That his companies were strong is to be seen in the fact that they survived the first shock of the Stock Exchange crisis without strain.

But Insull believed, like Kreuger, that the depression would not last. He was one of the band of business men whom ] President Hoover summoned to Washington to take measures to meet the depression, and he returned to Chicago to order an extensive development campaign. This lack of vision was joined with another and more serious thing. Insull embarked on a struggle with another millionaire for control of the companies he had organised. The rival threatened to gain enough stock to defeat Insull, and this was intolerable to the man who had organised the corporations. He bought the interloper out, but to do so had to lodge stock at the bank for loans to the extent of many millions. Then came the final crash. The state of the interlocking companies is so complicated that no one has the faintest idea just how bad the position may be. Early it was revealed that Insull had been making transfers, it was alleged, without authority, and warrants were issued for his arrest and for that of his brother Martin. The latter was found in Canada. Samuel Insull, who had resigned from all his posts, had left for England some time before. From there he was traced to Greece. The Greek Government refused to surrender him. There was no treaty of extradition in operation betwen the two Governments, though such a treaty had been negotiated. The United States requested the Greek Government to arrest Insull and the Greek police did move, but the Prime Minister, M. E. Venizelos, set him free and rebuked the officers responsible. The United States thereupon revoked Insull’s passport, making him a virtual prisoner in Greece. Insull himself, observed from day to day by a corps of newspapermen sent there for the purpose from overseas, complained that there was a plot to kidnap him and take him back to Chicago. The case has been described as “bigger, than the American Presidential election.” 1