CHEATS JUSTICE

Taranaki Daily News, 4 June 1934, Page 2

CHEATS JUSTICE

SUICIDE IN COURT. ONCE RICHEST MAN IN FRANCE. Henri Rochette, ex-waiter, banker, soldier and adventurer, who stole in all £10,000,000 from the people of France, died by his own hand in the Palace of Justice in Paris last month. His escapades rocked Europe in the days of pre-war finance. He was a greater swindler than Stavisky. He left in his wake a train of broken lives, and one great tragedy—the Caillaux case.

"If I am condemned, blood will flow.” This grim threat was made by the banker Henri Rochette three weeks previously, when the Paris Public Prosecutor first accused him of having committed a series of gigantic financial frauds. Then Henri Rochette was found guilty and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. He appealed. His appeal was heard in the Palace of Justice. The judges, instead of quashing the sentence, increased it from two years’ imprisonment to three years. They remembered that Stavisky, a young man when, in 1908, the first great Rochette scandal started France, had been fired by the example of the arch-swindler to those schemes which have reacted so disastrously on the France of to-day. Hardly had the verdict been announced when Rochette, who was standing at the back of the Court with something of the nochalant air of a mere spectator, whipped a razor from his pocket and slashed his throat.

Thirty years ago an obscure waiter in Paris. On the Riviera he had tended tne wealthy, had heard financiers talk in millions . . . The obscure little waiter had come to conquer Paris, but he differed from many unknown genius in that he was not penniless. He had, in fact, about £2oo—an inheritance. Four years later everyone in France was talking of the great Henri Rochette —the financier in. whose companies everyone was investing, whose enterprises were going to make millionaires of just such little provincials as the obscure waiter from the Riviera himself. There was the great Rochette’s Franco-Spanish Bank, his Credit Minier et Industrial, and the lottery bonds of his Credit Foncier Egyptien. All little gold mines, you were quite out of the swim unless you could try your luck with the great Rochette. And Rochette? He was everywhere. At the great restaurants, smiling his charming if rather fox smile, on his arm a fashionable favourite. His wealth nobody could guess. It was colossal, appalling. And this amazing man was only yet in the thirties. He became, on paper, the richest man in France. Of course, he had his enemies, but who could credit their criticisms? Soon, however, the criticisms became open accusations. In 1908 the storm broke. The great Rochette was arrested for violating the laws concerning stocks and bonds.

He was sentenced to two years. He appealed and was set free. He would vindicate himself, confound his enemies.

Certainly he made even more money—and spent money, too. And to such purpose that it was not until 1911 that Rochette had to face a retrial. Rochette could manipulate more things than money. He could manipulate the law—and men. He tried to stave off his trial for six years, and then, under French law, he could go free.

But here a courageous newspaper editor, Gaston Calmette, took a hand. He accused Joseph Caillaux, Minister of Finance, of shielding Rochette. A commission was formed under Jean Jaures, the Socialist who was afterwards to fall at the hand of an assassin. The commission found that Caillaux had aided Rochette, but innocently. Calmette returned to the attack; attacked the moral character of Calliaux and the honour of Mme. Caillaux. One morning early in 1914 Mme. Caillaux went to the office of Calmette, a revolver in her muff. She shot him dead. But the real criminal, Rochette, whose frauds totalled £6,000,000, had escaped to South America. Then came the war and men forgot about Rochette and *bis frauds. Rochette was no coward. He joined the French Army as a private, and the Statute of Limitations erased the criminal charges against him. . _ But in 1918, 1921, and again in 1927 more financial frauds shook Paris, and Rochette was in and out of prison throughout these years.