JABEZ BALFOUR.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIX, Issue 8122, 18 April 1906, Page 5

JABEZ BALFOUR.

RELEASED FROM PRISON. Received April 17, 8.18 a.m. LONDON, April 16. Jabez Balfour, who in 1896 was sentenced to imprisonment in connection with the Liberator frauds, I has been released. He is in excellent health, and will devote; himself to literature as a means of livelihood. (The failure of the Liberator Permanent Building Society and its i allied companies was one of the most calamitous events of the year 1893, involving, it was estimated, n total loss to the investing public of about seven millions sterling. Many ministers not only invested in it themselves, but also adeised members of their flocks to place their savings in an institution which had regultrly paid a dividend of 5 per cent. How this was done was explained at the public examination of the directors and officers, when it was explained that in 1887, when £IOI,OOO was paid in the shape of dividends, there was a nominal balance at the bank of only £22,500, the society actually owing the bank £58,000. At Anis time a million and three-quarters of the members' money was advanoed to the Lands Allotment Company, the Real Estates Company, and other concerns promoted by Balfour, the greater part of the money which wont as dividends consisting of deposits from new members. In this way the society was kept going for a long time, aud public confidence remained uushaken. Mr Jabez Balfour, M.P. for Burley, was chairman of the society. On the collapse of the companies and the disclosures at the public enquiry Balfour fled to the Argentine. On Balfour's retreat being found in the course uf 1894 the courts of the Argentine Republic were moved ,for his extradition, which was secured after many months' delay, aud on October 28th, 1895, be was placed on trial with three other directors, convicted, and sentenced to 14 years' ponai servitude.)