BOOTLEGGING AT PAPEETE

Taranaki Daily News, 5 September 1932, Page 9

BOOTLEGGING AT PAPEETE

ONE MILLION FRANCS A YEAR.

LIQUOR CARGO RELOADED,

Alongside the , wharf at Papeete a steamer was discharging a cargo of wine and spirits. An Aucklander who has since returned home was sunning himself on tho Wharf at the time, and innocently inquired the destination of the valuable cargo. To her surprise she learned that soon it would be reloaded into the ship from which it had been discharged and taken many miles away from the sun-drenched islands of Tahiti. Unknown to herself, the Aucklander who watched the dark Tahitian labourers handle the many hundreds of cases of wine and spirit had looked upon a branch of the huge bootlegging business that is being carried on along , the Pacific and Atlantic seaboards of- the United States and Mexico. The innocent-look-frig steamer was & bootleggers' ship, although there was nothing illegal in the fact that she was reloading a cargo she had herself discharged. “The cargo had been loaded at Vancouver and consigned to Papeete,” eaid the Aucklander in telling the story to the Star. “When it was put ashore it Was carried into sheds near the wharf. In the Sheds the cases were ripped off and the bottles, still in their jackets, placed in sacks. Possibly the sacks were intended as a form of camouflage, although I was unable to satisfy myself on that point. The sacks certainly made the liquor more easy to handle. “When enclosed in the sacks the liquor was reloaded in the steamer, whicn eventually left Papeete carrying the identical cargo she had loaded at Vancouver,’ continued the Aucklander. “From Papeete her destination was Vancouver, but 1 learned that somewhere on her voyage home she* would rid herself of her valuable freight. And the steamer I saw is not the only one that drops into Papeete to land a cargo, reload it again, and sail a 'lt y 'mav bo taken for 'granted J that the cargo that the Aucklander saw handled at Papeete was transferred to one of the “mother ships” that keep just beyond the 12-inile .limit in American territorial waters. From the mother ship it was probably raced ashore in fast motor boats and landed in secluded places where other bootleggers were waiting, to send it on the last stage of its journey. ■ “I understand that the bootlegging business ds. worth one million francs a year to , the French administration, said the Aucklander. “This money, together with the wealth that is brought by tourist- traffic, chiefly from America, helps Papeete’ to prosper-when the rest of the world is in difficulties. Without its tourists and its bootleggers, Papeete, would be in a bad way; for the price of copra is very low and mother of pearl shell and vanilla, the other principal are practically ■unsaleable.”