EX-CONVICTS WEALTH

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 71, Issue 276, 21 November 1928, Page 8

EX-CONVICTS WEALTH

MORE THAN A MILLION FORTUNE MADE IN A YEAH. The sensational romance of a convict who left the great Berlin prison of Floetzeusee a year ago without a penny and has in twelve months become one of the leading figures of French finance, has been told in Berlin. I It is announced that Michael Holz i maun, who, for his share in the great Kutisker finance scandal, was sentenced to a term of imprisonment, is trying in every way possible to obtain permission to return to Germany. He has instructed Dr, Fuchs, his Berlin lawyer, to demand a re-trial of his case. When Holzinann walked out of the gates of the Ploetzensee prison at the i eg-nning of last year he was faced with starvation. The only asset remaining two him of the fortune he had amassed during the German inflation period was a solitary typewriter. This lie pawned, and with the proceeds took a tliird-class ticket to Paris, where he still had a few faithful friends.

Holzmaun became acquainted with Baron Joachim von Bethmann-Hollweg, a nephew of the former Genian Chancellor, and the stepson of Herr von ►Schubert, the German Permanent Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Baron von Bethmann-Hollweg had sufficient faith in the financial genius of this remarkable man to entrust him to carry out certain financial transactions on his behalf. These transactions were the beginning of Holzmaun’s rapid ascent to undreamed-of pinnacles of financial power.

A young and unknown inventor sold to him the rights of a revolutionary method of refining coarse oils to render them fit for use in motor cars and machinery. Holzinann, after receiving optimistic reports on the process from a German expert, founded an oil factory which at once proved a great success. He was able, with the vast profits of this enterprise, to acquire a French bank for about £60,000.

The uncanny genius of Holzmaun again made for him a fortune within a few weeks, so that he was able to purchase a partnership in a french motor car factory, and interests in a number of great petrol refineries in France and Italy. He also purchased an estate ou the French Riviera, near Cannes, where he has started rose-growing on a vast, scale for the iapply of European flower and perfume markets. His latest coup has been to buy up a fashionable watering place with four first-class hotels, a theatre, and a magnificent complex of luxurious thermal baths.

This penniless ex-convict financier in the .space of a little more than twelve months has thus built a fortune which, even at a conservative estimate, is reckoned to amount to more than £1,000,000. He does not attempt to live on a scale in accordance with his vast income, but he owns a palace in the Bois de Boulogne, opposite the residence of M. Poincare, and has in addition to an army of servants, a fleet of motor cars for his use and that of his secretaries.