3 – Jabez Balfour
Our next corrupt office-holder may not have dealt in billions of his country’s currency, but there is very little doubt his actions made many people’s lives a misery while he was alive. Jabez Balfour was an English businessman and politician. He was born in London in 1843 and was elected as a Member of Parliament for the constituency of Tamworth in the House of Commons in the United Kingdom in 1880. He subsequently became MP for Croydon in 1885 and then for Walworth in 1886. Balfour’s extensive business interests involved founding investment underwriting firm Trustees, Executors and Securities Insurance Corporation, Limited in 1887 with fellow financiers Leopold Salomons and Sir John Pender. He was also the chairman of the Northampton Street Tramways. In many ways, he was what many nowadays regard as the archetypal prosperous Victorian industrialist.
In 1892, Balfour was embroiled in a scandal that would come to define him. A number of companies Balfour had set up and controlled, including most prominently the Liberator Building Society, went bust because the Liberator had sent money to property companies to purchase properties owned by Balfour at a very high price. While Balfour had made huge sums of money, thousands of investors were left in ruins. When the scandal and Balfour’s part in it was revealed, Balfour fled the UK, but was arrested in Argentina in 1895 by Scotland Yard’s Inspector Frank Forest. Proceedings to extradite Balfour back to Britain to be tried became bogged down by legal toing-and-froing. To overcome this, Froest simply manhandled Balfour into a train and boat bound for the UK. Balfour was convicted in London’s Old Bailey court and sentenced to fourteen years in prison. He was released in 1906 and died aged 72 on February 23, 1916.