Piastres affair

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (February 2009) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the French article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,627 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Affaire des piastres]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|fr|Affaire des piastres}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

The Piastres affair, also known as Piastres scandal or Piastres trade (French: l'affaire des piastres, le scandale des piastres, or le trafic de piastres), was a financial-political scandal of the French Fourth Republic during the First Indochina War from 1950 to 1953. The basis for the affair was the pegging in 1945 of the French Indochinese piastre to the French franc at a rate of seventeen to one, increased from the previous rate of ten to one to avoid devaluation of the franc.

However the real value of the piastre in Indochina remained around 10 francs or less; when piastres were transferred to France through the Foreign Exchange Office (Office indochinois des changes, or OIC) the Treasury (therefore the French taxpayer) paid out the established seventeen francs per piastre, amounting to an effective subsidy of around 8.50 francs according to Jacques Despuech, author of the first book on the case in 1953 and journalist for The French Nation. Despite controls given to the OIC in 1948, the situation resulted in widespread money-laundering related to organized crime and political corruption.

The affair was brought to light in 1950 but aroused little interest among parliamentarians until 1952–3, when it was realized that the Viet Minh was also benefiting.

In July, 1954 the Geneva Accords were signed, ending French Indochina.

• French Indochinese piastre
• Generals' Affair
• Henri Martin Affair
• First Indochina War
• French political scandals
• North Vietnamese đồng

• Lucien Bodard, The Indochina War: The Stagnation, the Humiliation, the Adventure (La guerre d'Indochine. L'enlisement, l'humiliation, l'aventure), Grasset, 1500 p., Paris, 1997.
• Yves Gras, History of the Indochina War (Hirtoire de la guerre d'lndorhine), Plon, Paris, 1979.
• Paul Mus, Vietnam: Sociology of a War (Viêt-Nam, sociologie d'une guerre), Seuil, Paris, 1952.
• Jules Roy, The Battle of Dien Bien Phu, Julliard, 1963; Albin Michel, 1989.
• Despuech Jacques, The traffic of the Piastres, Two banks, 1953.
• Marianne, number of July 8, 2002.

This French history–related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e