Alves dos Reis
Artur Virgílio Alves dos Reis (born September 3, 1898 in Lisbon , † June 9, 1955 ) was a Portuguese fraudster. He is responsible for the second largest counterfeit money fraud in the history of banking , surpassed only by the National Socialist action Bernhard . Reis' counterfeit money destabilized the First Portuguese Republic and contributed to its overthrow in the 1926 military coup.
Beginnings
Alves dos Reis grew up in a middle-class family. He broke off his engineering studies in favor of marrying Maria Luísa Jacobetti de Azevedo in his first year, especially since his father's business went bankrupt and he was penniless. In 1916 he emigrated to what was then the Portuguese colony of Angola to try his luck there. Very soon he got a managerial position in construction. He owed this rapid rise to a fake diploma from the Polytechnic School of Engineering at Oxford , a non-existent institution. With a bad check, Reis bought the majority of shares in an Angolan railroad company, with which he acquired wealth and reputation.
The Ambaca case
Back in Lisbon in 1922 he took a stake in a company called Ambaca that bought and sold American automobiles. He made a fortune at the company by transferring approximately $ 100,000 in corporate funds to his personal account. With this money he acquired shares in other companies, including a. also at Companhia Mineira do Sul de Angola , an Angolan mining company. The fraud was discovered and in July 1924 he was arrested in Porto following due process.
Counterfeiting of banknotes
During his imprisonment - he was only imprisoned for 54 days - he planned his greatest coup: the forgery of a contract from the Banco de Portugal . As the central bank , it had the overall supervision of money transactions in Portugal and thus the right to print money. His idea was to place an order for a series of 500 Escudo notes with a private company on behalf of the bank and thus obtain counterfeit banknotes that could not be distinguished from real notes.
In 1924, Alves dos Reis made contacts with influential personalities whom he subsequently employed as unsuspecting helpers. These included the Dutch financier Karel Marang van IJsselveere and José Bandeira, the ambassador's brother in The Hague .
Alves dos Reis drew up a fictitious contract and managed to have it notarized by various official bodies, including a. from the English, French and German consulates. The signature of the Portuguese ambassador presumably gave Reis access to the relevant people.
It was through Karel Marang, who was head of a money printing company, that contact was made with the British company Waterlow & Sons , which usually also handled official printing orders from Portugal. On December 4, 1924, Marang negotiated with William Waterlow and asked him for the greatest possible discretion due to political reasons . The purpose of the new money series was stated to stimulate the money traffic in the colony of Angola. Since the money was to be used exclusively overseas, the contracting parties agreed to reuse the printing plates from a series of banknotes that were already in circulation. Only an addition “Angola” should be added. Due to the unusual circumstances, William Waterlow wrote a confidential letter to the head of the Portuguese central bank. It is not known how this letter was intercepted by Reis, but he wrote the reply itself.
After all doubts had been dispelled, Waterlow & Sons finally printed 200,000 banknotes with a face value of 500 escudos. This sum was equivalent to about 1 percent of the Portuguese gross domestic product at the time. The number of counterfeit banknotes was almost as high as that of legal ones. In February 1925, with the help of José Bandeira, the first notes reached Portugal via England. Karel Marang then managed to set up secure transport through the Liberian embassy in England.
Although Alves dos Reis was the initiator of these events, he only kept 25 percent of the sum to himself. He divided the sum into 200 bank bonds from Banco Comercial Português , an agricultural bank with which he hoped for a return of 7 percent and at the same time wanted to support the impoverished middle class in buying rice plantations. This was enough for him, however, because he had to watch the bank use its funds for warmongering in Angola. In June 1925 he decided to found his own banking house and to counter the established system of usurious interest rates . Again he forged documents to speed up the approval process. He invested his money in stocks and in forex trading. In addition, he bought numerous properties and took over the entire taxi business in the Portuguese capital. He also financed a lavish lifestyle for his accomplice, José Bandeira, who had numerous affairs with famous women all over Europe.
One of Alves dos Reis' goals seems to have been to take over the semi-state Banco de Portugal in order to better cover up his dark machinations. Throughout 1925 he bought around 10,000 shares in the bank through straw men, of which around 45,000 would have been a majority of the shares.
Exposure
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In the meantime it was noticed in several places that the amount of 500 escudo notes in circulation was far too high. However, the central bank specialists could not find any counterfeit notes. From November 23, 1925, journalists from the newspaper O Século became interested in the less transparent processes at Alves dos Reis' house bank. It was noticeable that this bank was able to offer loans at extremely low interest rates without actually being able to present customers who also invested their money there. Curiously, the journalists thought of an attempt by German espionage to ruin the finances in Portugal in order to make it possible to take over the colony of Angola.
On December 5, 1925, the first report was published in the newspaper. The day before, for the first time, Alves dos Reis found a banknote with the same number as a legal banknote. Only then were the machinations of Reis exposed. An order was issued to all banks to sort their banknotes according to the serial number. This led to the discovery of false notes en masse.
Alves dos Reis's property was immediately confiscated, which also resulted in the falsified documents for his ventures being found. He was arrested on December 6, 1925, aboard a ship intended to return to Angola. He was only 28 years old on the day of his arrest. Most of his accomplices could also be arrested.
Judgment and Imprisonment
Alves dos Reis was in captivity from December 6, 1925 to May 8, 1930. During this time he was able to convince a judge that the board of the Banco de Portugal itself was involved in the fraud. He did this again by using forged identity papers . After a suicide attempt he was provisionally released.
The final verdict was pronounced in St. Clara Court in May 1930: 20 years imprisonment, of which 8 years in prison and 12 years in exile . Alternatively, Alves dos Reis could also be exiled for 25 years. He was credited with saying that one of his goals was to stimulate economic development in Angola. While in captivity, Reis converted to the Protestant faith. He was dismissed in May 1945. He was immediately offered jobs by several banks, all of which he refused. He went back to Angola, where he devoted himself to growing coffee. There he earned great respect from the local black population as he showed them new opportunities in trade. It was customary at the time to deprive blacks of their rightful share of the harvest. Alves dos Reis showed the farmers how to avoid being cheated. During these operations, however, he was caught fraud again. Alves dos Reis died of a heart attack on June 9, 1955, before he went to prison. Totally impoverished, he could only leave his son an old linen suit.
epilogue
The Portuguese currency has fluctuated significantly as a result of the fraud and lost much of its credibility. The Portuguese politics and financial world also lost a reputation from which they could no longer recover. In 1926, the First Portuguese Republic was overthrown by a military coup led by Manuel de Oliveira Gomes da Costa , from which the dictatorial Estado Novo of António de Oliveira Salazar developed by 1932 .
A lawsuit was opened against Waterlow & Sons , as a result of which they were sentenced to pay compensation to the Banco de Portugal . After the payment, the company had to file for bankruptcy.
literature
- Artur Virgilio Alves Reis: O Angola e Metrópole . Lisbon 1927
- Murray Teigh Bloom: The Man Who Stole Portugal. The greatest hoax ever . rororo, Reinbek 1973, ISBN 3-499-11619-7 (American English: The Man Who Stole Portugal . London 1966. Translated by Leonore Germann-Zaja).
- Thomas Gifford : Escudo. Novel. Lübbe, 2005, ISBN 3-404-15291-3 (dramatized)
- Egon Larsen : Real counterfeit money for Angola. Arthur Virgilio Alves Reis . In: impostor . Ernst Kabel, Hamburg 1984, ISBN 3-921909-42-2 , p. 218-231 .
- Andrew Bull: Alves Reis and the Portuguese Bank Note Scandal of 1925. In: The British Historical Society. 24, 1997, pp. 22-57.
- Essad Bey: Love and Petroleum: A Romantic Novella. Verlag Hans-Jürgen Maurer, Freiburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-929345-35-3 (motifs processed).
filming
- Erich Neureuther: Made-to-measure millions with Curd Jürgens, Ruth-Maria Kubitschek and Wolfgang Völz. 1970. DVD No. 24 in the series Straßenfeger , 2010 (free adaptation)
Web links
- The Effects Of The 1925 Portuguese Bank Note Crisis, Henry Wigan, Department of Economic History, London School of Economics , February 2004. (PDF file; 404 kB, English)
- A case of perfect counterfeiting (English)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Rice, Alves dos |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Reis, Artur Virgílio Alves dos (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | portuguese scammer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 3, 1898 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lisbon |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 9, 1955 |