GAOL FOR FINANCIER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 714, 13 July 1929, Page 9

GAOL FOR FINANCIER

TWO YEARS AND A FINE FOR KLOTZ FORMER FRENCH MINISTER (United I*.A. —By Telegraph — Copyright) (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) Reed. 11 a.m. PARIS, Friday. Louis Lucien Klotz, seven times French Minister o£ Finance, and a signatory of the Versailles Treaty, was today sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and fined 50 francs on charges of uttering cheques when he had insufficient means to meet them, and also with issuing bills of exchange with false signatures. M. Klotz was pale and haggard. The defence argued that he had acted without intent to defraud. A sensation was caused on December 11 in the Senate by the announcement by M. Paul Doumer, a former Minister of Finance, that the Minister of Justice, M. Barthou, intended to seek authority to initiate legal proceedings against M. Klotz. He was reported later to have had a breakdown and been taken to a mental hospital. He had sustained heavy losses in financial transactions, and in gambling at a seaside casino. It was alleged that he paid his losses with cheques which were dishonoured. He was later declared by three mental specialists “perfectly sane and fully responsible for his acts.” It was revealed that M. Klotz had lost all his fortune, estimated at 8,000,000 or 10,000,000 francs, in gambling on the turf or in casinos or clubs.