Stavisky Affair

The Stavisky Affair was a 1934 financial scandal generated by the actions of embezzler Alexandre Stavisky. It had political ramifications for the French Radical Socialist moderate government of the day because the Prime Minister had protected Stavisky, who suddenly died in mysterious circumstances. The political right engaged in large anti-government demonstrations on 6 February 1934. Paris police opened fire and killed 15 demonstrators. A right-wing coup d'état seemed like a possibility, but historians agree that the multiple right-wing forces were in no way coordinated and in no way trying to overthrow the government.

Serge Alexandre Stavisky (1888–1934), who became known as le beau Sacha ("Handsome Sasha"), was a Russian Jew born in modern-day Ukraine whose parents had moved to France. He tried various professions, working as a café singer, as a nightclub manager, as a worker in a soup factory, and as the operator of a gambling den. In the 1930s he managed municipal pawnshops in Bayonne but also moved in financial circles. He sold lots of worthless bonds and financed his "hockshop" on the surety of what he called the emeralds of the late Empress of Germany — which later turned out to be glass.

Stavisky maintained his façade by using his connections to many people in important positions. If some newspaper tried to investigate his affairs, he bought them off, sometimes with large advertisement contracts, sometimes by buying the paper.

In 1927 Stavisky was put on trial for fraud for the first time. However, the trial was postponed again and again and he was granted bail 19 times. He probably continued his scams during this time. One judge who claimed to hold secret documents was later found decapitated.

Janet Flanner writes:

Faced with exposure in December 1933, Stavisky fled. On 8 January 1934, the police found him in a chalet in Chamonix, dying from a gun wound. Officially Stavisky committed suicide but there was a persistent speculation that police killed him. Fourteen Parisian newspapers called it suicide and eight did not. The distance the bullet had traveled led Le Canard enchaîné to propose the tongue-in-cheek theory that he had "".

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