A PERJURY CHARGE GATHERS DUST

...Louis Post-Dispatch, has uncovered news of great significance to those who have followed the recent charges made by Frank J. Boehm, former $54,000-a-year vice president of the Union Electric Company of Missouri, that the North American Company, giant utility holding concern, had used a $5,000,000 slush fund to influence elections and utility legislation throughout the United States...

...Childs reported that in October of 1942 the Securities and Exchange Commission recommended to the United States Department of Justice that James F. Fogarty, former president of the North American Company, be prosecuted for perjury...

...Testimony of Albert Laun, former lobbyist for the company and Boehm, however, told of Fogarty's active participation in the scheme...

...The Supreme Court recently refused to hear the appeal from his conviction and he now has filed a petition for probation and suspension of his two year sentence on the ground of failing health...

...In his petition, Boehm charged that his superiors had made him the scapegoat in a conspiracy to manipulate the financial affairs of the North American empire...

...The SEC's recommendation was the result of an exhaustive study made of the testimony by Fogarty and other witnesses in the trial of Louis H. Egan, who was convicted of violating the corrupt practices section of the Holding Company Act while president of Union Electric, a subsidiary of North American...

...Wartime conditions, according to Blanton, have made prosecution impossible since much of the SEC personnel familiar with the case has gone into the armed services...

...The Department of Justice has refused to comment on the status of the case filed against Fogarty other than to say that it had been referred to the United States Attorney at St...

...A Case Of The Higher Brackets On the other hand, Egan has maintained a tight-lipped silence, telling as little as possible of the corruption and bribery of which he and the company have been found guilty...

...Boehm Renews Charges At the trial Fogarty contradicted the testimony of Boehm and other former employes of Union Electric to the effect that North American officials not only had knowledge of Union Electric's use of a $600,-000 slush fund, but had made such activities compulsory and had urged officials of the Missouri subsidiary to perjure themselves at the time the company was under fire from the SEC...

...Blanton's explanation of the government's failure to proceed against Fogarty is another indication of how little concerned the Department of Justice sometimes is with misdeeds when they involve people in the higher income brackets, and important political posts...

...The SEC's evidence and recommendation have been gathering dust in the Justice Department's inactive files since then...

...Fogarty, who was president of North American from 1934 to 1939—the years during which Union Electric carried on its most intensive campaign of corruption—maintained an attitude of complete innocence all during the Egan trial, denying that he had any knowledge whatsoever of the complicated system of kick-backs and the other ingenious devices used by Union Electric to raise and distribute its slush funds...

...Louis Circuit Court...

...They told, in great detail, of conversations they had had with Fogarty concerning the slush fund practices...

...The government seems always to have an abundance of manpower to investigate and prosecute obscure and penniless individuals who violate, intentionally or otherwise, the hundred thousand and one laws that govern them today...

...But there doesn't seem to be anyone who knows or who can learn enough to prosecute men like Fogarty...

...Louis, Harry C. Blanton...

...Boehm recently renewed the charges made at the trial when he instituted a $24,500,000 damage suit against North American and many of its present and past officers in the St...