FRANCE: Pipeline Anonymous

Although brandy is customarily drunk in elaborately small amounts, distillers (with a realistic appraisal of the demand) store it in vats often 32 ft. high and 39 ft. in diameter. A certain amount of evaporation occurs in these reservoirs, but not to the extent of 2,000 gallons a month or so, thought the owners of the Hazebrouck distillery in northern France. Yet their vats were guarded by special police, surrounded by high walls, and there seemed no opportunity for theft. Was there a leak? The Hazebrouck distillers drained off their largest vat. Peering into the darkness, workmen spied a small, shining object and uncovered the end of a metal tube. The tube led them under the distillery walls, 100 yds. along a ditch, across a meadow, into a garage on the national highway.”Mon Dieu! What a scheme!” said an admiring Frenchman. “You just turn a spigot and the liquor gushes out!” Arrested in Belgium, Garageowner Edouard Welcomme and his wife implicated others, and soon the town of Hazebrouck was filled with denunciations and counter-denunciations. Result: Abel Vandamme, a rich textile manufacturer living in a castle near Lille, and accused of being the “brain” of a gang of brandy siphoners, went on trial with 26 others in Hazebrouck last week for what French police grandly called the biggest alcohol fraud in French history.