Serge Alexandre Stavisky (20 November 1886, Ukraine – 8 January 1934, Chamonix) was a French financier and embezzler whose actions created a political scandal that became known as the Stavisky Affair.[1]
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.
Faced with exposure in December 1933, Stavisky fled. On 8 January 1934, the police found him in a Chamonix chalet dying from a gunshot wound. Officially, Stavisky committed suicide, but there was persistent speculation that the police had killed him.
Alexandre Stavisky was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery.
In Forces occultes, a film commissioned in 1942 by the "Propaganda Abteilung", a delegation of Nazi Germany's propaganda ministry within occupied France, Stavisky was presented as both a Freemason and a crook. In 1974, film director Alain Resnais told the story in the film Stavisky... that featured Jean-Paul Belmondo in the title role and Anny Dupérey as his wife Arlette.