I Am the Crown Prince in France

Chapter 517 Cleansing out unscrupulous tax collectors

Southern suburbs of Paris.

In the interrogation room on the second floor of the National Prison No. 1, a man covered with tattoos from his neck to his arms lowered his head and shouted nervously: "I swear, Mr. Barna asked me to do this!

"He also found someone to get those fake documents. I just handed the fake documents to the tax bureau according to his instructions..."

"The documents handed over to the tax bureau are all signed by you." The policeman sitting opposite him said coldly, "Forging tax documents will probably lead to a prison sentence of five to ten years."

"No..." The tattooed man suddenly trembled and said hurriedly, "I can testify against Barna, oh, and my men can also prove it!"

"Isn't it Rekedian Mallet de Barna?"

"Yes, that's him."

"Where is he now?"

"He should be in Coles Street..."

The intelligence officer who was standing by and listening immediately whispered to his subordinates: "Go and bring him."

"Yes, sir!"

As the interrogation continued, more and more high-level tax collectors were exposed and joined the new trial team.

At the same time, the assets of all tax collectors involved in the case also began to be seized.

This is the ruling made by the High Court - the facts of the fraud case are clear and will inevitably involve tax accounts, so it is very reasonable to seize the assets.

On the other side, tax bureaus across France, with the cooperation of the police, began to seal down local tax offices and arrested almost all tax collectors.

It's not like Paris where people are arrested as little as possible to take into account the impact.

The local tax bureau is only worried that next year's tax revenue will be affected, so it will catch everything it can first, and in the worst case, it will be released later if there are no problems.

Just two days later, as more and more high-level tax collectors confessed, the "document forgery" case began to spread to the giants of the tax collectors association.

On the carriage, Barlow, one of the giants of the Tax Farmers Federation, looked at the huge headline in the Paris Business Journal with a gloomy expression - "Shocking! Tax farmers are collectively involved in falsifying tax documents, and more than 150 people have been arrested." , I just felt a suffocating pain in my chest.

The day before yesterday, he was still planning how to adjust the scale of the tax farm and increase private wine transactions to maintain the original level of income after obtaining the salt tax and wine tax from four provinces including Reims and Champagne. News that two of his most important tax collectors were arrested for forging documents.

He knew that he would be confessed soon.

Although forging documents is not a serious crime for him, as usual, he only needs to come up with a sum of money - which should not exceed 250,000 francs, and he can be released on bail, but he will eventually face troubles such as appearing in court, and It will inevitably affect your other businesses.

At this time, Barlow was a little envious of Morel, Goldmead and others. Most of their businesses were abroad. If they really couldn't do it, they could give up their business in France and ignore these cases.

He is a native of France, and his roots are here. Now he no longer thinks about tax farming, he just hopes to get rid of the current trouble.

Soon the carriage stopped in the Palace of Versailles Square. Barlow got out of the carriage, lowered his head and walked quickly towards the gate of the Palace of Versailles.

In the Chancellor's office, he looked at Brian with a pleading look on his face and said: "Archbishop, I really don't know these things, they are all the ideas of those below...

"Of course, I'm also responsible. I'm willing to pay the fine."

He glanced at Brian secretly and said, "Look, is 500,000 francs okay... Oh, no, 800,000 francs!"

Brian just stared at the table in front of him in silence. It wasn't until Barlow increased the fine to 1 million francs that he raised his head and said calmly: "Count Barlow, the tax collector's behavior will always cause harm to the national finance." The impact was so great that I had to issue special government bonds to cover the losses caused by the tax chaos early next year.”

"National debt?" Barlow was stunned for a moment, then reacted and nodded, "Ah, yes, we need to prepare funds to deal with chaos. Dear Archbishop, I am willing to purchase 3 million francs of national debt to support you..."

Brian shook his head slightly and stretched out a finger.

"1 million..." Barlow only said half a sentence, and then suddenly exclaimed, "You want me to buy 10 million national bonds?!

"This is too much... What is the benefit of this special national debt?"

"3%," Brian said, "1 year."

Barlow's face turned green.

If you use 10 million francs to cover taxes, you can even earn 3 million, but if you buy this national debt, you will only get 300,000 in interest!

He stood up dissatisfied, bowed, and said, "I'll think about it." Then he turned and left.

With 4 million francs, he can deal with tax fraud no matter how he manages it. Why should he look at Brian's face here?

After he left, giants such as Baron Morel and Bolore also came to Brian's office. Even Fuld came to "admit his mistake" before dinner.

But they soon left with dark faces.

Dusk.

On the second floor of the Tuileries Palace, Joseph frowned slightly after listening to Brian's report: "Only Baron Pellier promised to buy 7 million treasury bonds, and no one else accepted it?"

"Yes, Your Highness." Brian said hesitantly, "Maybe 10 million is a bit too much.

"According to my calculations, we need about 100 million francs to meet the funding needs for next year. So they only need to pay 6 million francs each."

Joseph shook his head: "You are only talking about the cost of maintaining the operation of government policies. If we want to do things like dredging canals and building wooden tracks, it will be far from enough."

Brian was stunned. After such a big move in tax reform, it is already rare to be able to maintain stability. His Royal Highness the Crown Prince is actually thinking about projects such as canals and rail transit?

Joseph didn't care about his expression, stroking his teacup and muttering to himself: "It seems that we have to give them some strength."

In the past, there was no way to deal with these tax farmers, but now there is a breakthrough in document forgery, so how can they be let off easily?

You know, in history, tax farmers were sentenced to death by the Jacobins, and many of them were sentenced too heavily, but it was enough to show that this group had a bad record.

…

On the deck of the French naval frigate "Wonderland Forest" heading to the port of Calvi in ​​Corsica, Napoleon looked out at the vague outline of the hills and sighed deeply.

On the small table next to him was the "Times" from more than a month ago. The translation was read to him many times. The news about Paulie's rape case had smashed a huge crack in his belief.

He thought of Paulie's works that he had read since he was a child and shook his head.

What for the Corsican people, to drive away foreign oppression, are just excuses for him to deceive the public!

Napoleon looked at several transport ships on the side and rear, which carried two artillery companies and hundreds of infantry. This force could win him the position of commander-in-chief of the Corsican Corps.