The judgment of the Correctional Tribunal of Paris opens upon a stark discrepancy of figures: the joint-stock company of the Caisse and the journal l’Épargne was said to have been constituted with a capital of five million francs, yet the payments declared by its founders were nowhere to be found in its strongbox. This gulf between the capital recorded on paper and the coin actually remitted forms the very core of the trial. In its account of the hearings of 15 and 16 May 1872, the Gazette des Tribunaux reproduced a judgment detailing the operations, the public appeals, and the sentences pronounced. The enterprise had proclaimed its solvency through legal instruments; the court set about examining what those instruments concealed.
The headline of the issue of 18 May announced both the affair of l’Épargne and that of the Kursaal and Grand Hôtel d’Enghien. The Gazette noted, however, that these were two distinct prosecutions. At the head of the transcribed decision, it recorded that judgment by default was entered against Lauze, Dussaux, and Dalverny. The present chronicle halts at the decision rendered in the l’Épargne affair, before the journal embarked upon the separate proceedings concerning the Thermes d’Enghien. This distinction is of moment, for the same corporate entities and accused persons reappear across both dossiers. In the judgment of l’Épargne, transactions with the Enghien enterprises figured among the facts under scrutiny; they did not, for all that, merge the two trials into a single suit.
The tribunal traced the venture back to 1868. It related that Lauze, already sentenced for fraud by the Court of Riom in 1864 and standing on the brink of bankruptcy in 1867, then conceived the notion of a financial gazette in Paris. Being legally disqualified from assuming its management himself, he persuaded Fontbouillant, a clerk in his banking house on the Rue Feydeau, to take up the post. The publication drew subscribers and clients through ambitious puffs and advertisements. According to the grounds of the judgment, securities entrusted to l’Épargne were applied to the benefit of the enterprise without the knowledge or consent of their owners. Complaints multiplied; the deficit already exceeded one million francs.
To ward off catastrophe, Lauze sought to transform the newspaper into a public limited company. The judgment dated its incorporation to 14 September 1869, under the style of “Caisse et journal l’Épargne.” Its corporate object united the financial till, the gazette, and the issuance or brokerage of securities. The announced capital was five million francs, divided into ten thousand shares of five hundred francs each. Fontbouillant contributed the newspaper, its subscription lists, and its office furnishings; Alègre and Lauze appeared among the subscribers. The judgment specified that the whole of Fontbouillant’s contribution was valued at one million francs, represented by four thousand paid-up shares of 250 francs. This was, in truth, an arbitrary value ascribed to the journal, its clientele, and its furniture, and in no way a payment in legal tender. In the very same deed, the founders declared that one quarter of the subscribed capital had been paid into the till; the tribunal found that this sum had never entered it. Other names were inscribed for the remainder of the capital. The figures in the dossier were no mere forgotten ledgers: they served to present as accomplished an operation whose treasury bore none of the declared receipts.
The judgment affirmed that the founders and subscribers had declared one quarter of the shares paid up—amounting to seven hundred and fifty thousand francs—whereas no corresponding payment had ever reached the company’s treasury. Alègre claimed to have brought in a substantial sum. The court-appointed expert and the documents, as summarized by the Gazette, established that a sum of one hundred thousand francs had indeed been remitted to a clerk of Lauze; it originated, however, from the Crédit Foncier and belonged to the company of the Kursaal d’Enghien. It had been used to purchase securities intended to pacify certain claimants and stifle pending complaints. The judgment thus declined to treat this sum as a legitimate personal contribution to l’Épargne.
A preliminary general assembly appointed Alègre and Denizet to verify Fontbouillant’s contribution. Their report, dated 18 September, assessed the net profits of the gazette at four hundred and fifteen thousand francs and recommended that the contribution be approved. Yet the tribunal deemed these figures deliberately falsified. A few days later, a meeting purporting to bring together the subscribers declared the register of shares and payments to be genuine, and the company definitively formed. The judgment underlined a transparent contrivance: the semblance of an audit had been produced by the very men whose interest lay in having it accepted.
The appeal to the public continued unabated. Circulars heralded the new company and its supposed profits. They promised to set aside for subscribers twenty thousand half-paid shares at the price of two hundred and fifty francs. Drawing upon seized accounts and documents, the court set the reality of the subscriptions against this promise. A ledger found in Alègre’s office listed three thousand one hundred and thirty-nine shares; the counterfoils indicated that three thousand five hundred had been detached. According to the calculations adopted in the judgment, the sum embezzled varied according to the precise tally of shares placed. The Gazette preserved both totals rather than resolving the discrepancy.
On 8 March 1870, despite mounting embarrassments, an assembly adopted a balance sheet drawn up as of the close of the preceding December. It displayed a profit of one hundred and one thousand three hundred and forty-eight francs and a dividend of seven francs sixty-nine centimes per share. The expert, by contrast, estimated that the company was then laboring under a deficit of four hundred and three thousand francs. A subsequent circular publicized results that the judgment characterized as chimerical, announcing that an allotment in a great State loan had just been secured. Lauze, Alègre, and Fontbouillant, the tribunal asserted, were fully conscious of the disastrous state of affairs and knew that the company was hastening toward ruin.
The moneys collected did not remain within the bounds pledged to subscribers. The judgment recorded that the securities and titles entrusted to l’Épargne were squandered to the detriment of their owners. It portrayed Lauze and Alègre as the principal conductors of these operations, Fontbouillant having signed the circulars and lent his hand to the enterprise. It reproached Alègre in particular with having converted some three hundred and seventy-three thousand francs belonging to l’Épargne, which had been delivered to him under mandate. Among the grievances enumerated in the convictions, the court also cited the company of the Thermes d’Enghien and various subscribers to the national loan. These sums pertain to the judgment of l’Épargne; the distinct prosecution subsequently devoted to the Thermes remains outside the purview of this account.
Guilt was not visited indiscriminately upon all whose names had appeared on deeds or circulars. The tribunal discharged Denizet, Francingues, Ariès, Gelin, Lacoste, and Mademoiselle Darjou from the prosecution. It held that Dussaux and Dalverny had knowledge of the fraudulent contrivances and had lent their aid to feign the subscriptions and payments. The judgment described Fontbouillant’s role as self-effacing, yet considered that he could not have remained ignorant of the criminal character of the acts in which he took part. Thus did it apportion individual responsibilities, rather than confounding every hand that had signed a common instrument.
Lauze was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, a fine of five thousand francs, and five years of police surveillance following his release. Alègre received fifteen months and a fine of three thousand francs; Fontbouillant, four months and five hundred francs; Dussaux, one month; Dalverny, fifteen days and fifty francs. All were condemned jointly and severally to pay the costs. These sentences bring to a close the judgment published on 18 May. Lower down, the Gazette announced a separate trial concerning the Thermes d’Enghien. Here, the court sat in judgment upon the bookkeeping of l’Épargne: the subscribed capital, the feigned payments, the circulars, and the funds entrusted to its till. The printed figure had won credit; the audit of the ledgers extinguished it.