Bolo Pasha, originally named Paul Bolo, (September 24, 1867, Marseilles – April 17, 1918, Vincennes) was a Frenchman who was a Levantine financier, traitor, and a German agent. The New York Times wrote that he "circumnavigated the globe, engaged in various curious occupations, participated in many shady schemes." The French secret police and Scotland Yard failed to collect enough evidence to convict him of treason, but he was eventually convicted with the help of evidence collected by the New York Attorney General. He was executed by firing squad on April 17, 1918.
Early life
Paul Bolo was born in Marseille, the younger brother of "an eloquent French prelate". He changed occupations frequently. His first place of employment was a barber's shop where he worked as an assistant. After a few months, he became the owner of a small soap shop. His soap business eventually failed and so he decided to sell lobsters. The lobster sales were large, but expenses were greater than the income and the venture failed. He then left Marseille and became involved with a silk manufacturing company in Lyon. He later managed a photographic shop, but this business also was short-lived.
Bolo's next sojourn was in Paris where he quickly became "a man about town". He was easy-going and intelligent and became a frequent guest in the "convivial circles" of Paris. He married a woman who was older and much richer than he was; she died and left her fortune to him, and he went to Egypt.
Travel to Egypt and beyond
Bolo was an adventurer, and Egypt was considered to be "the Mecca of adventurers" at that time. A multicultural country appealed to this inquisitive Frenchman.
Almost as soon as Bolo arrived in Egypt he sought a meeting with the ruler, Abbas Hilmi, the last Khedive of Egypt and Sudan. Hilmi, who spoke fluent French, was as eager to meet with Europeans visiting Cairo as they were eager to meet with him. Bolo and Hilmi liked each other from the first meeting. They met frequently, and at one of those meetings, Bolo was presented with the title of Pasha. Paul Bolo thus became Bolo Pasha.
Bolo accompanied Hilmi on various outings: to a petrified forest and on boat trips along the Nile, with richly decorated boats. Bolo and Hilmi were seen together, visiting the statue of the Sphinx, the pyramids and the Mosque of Muhammad Ali, which is situated in the Citadel of Cairo. Gradually Bolo became an intimate friend of Hilmi, and as such he was present at some unusual court ceremonies, some of which he planned himself. One was a reception for a Consul-General from one of the European countries.
This was a carefree time in Bolo's life, but Hilmi had foreseen trouble. Hilmi thought he was about to be deposed, and he knew his country's history: a deposed Khedive would not be admired. Hilmi decided to use his friend Bolo to help him save as much as possible of his fortune. Newspaper articles of the time preserve this history:
Bolo found himself suspected because of his frequent trips between Paris and Geneva. During March 1915, Bolo met with Hilmi in Switzerland. Apparently Bolo was given $2,500,000 to be used to pay the French media in order to influence the public to accept peace with Germany.
Travel to United States
On February 22, 1916, Bolo arrived in New York City. He spent almost a month there, leaving on March 17, 1916. During the time he spent in New York, Bolo tried to avoid being seen in the company of German agents, but he traveled to Washington, DC, for a secret meeting with Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, the German ambassador in Washington to the United States.
Von Bernstorff masterminded an operation to organize German sabotage in the U.S. He was assisted by the Military Attaché Captain Franz von Papen, who purchased an established New York import/export firm, G. Amsinck & Co., to act as an intermediary for the financing of German espionage and sabotage in the US and launder the financial transactions. In 1915 von Bernstorff and Bolo had devised a scheme to destabilise the French war effort by corrupting the French press in order to force an early armistice with Germany. The Paris newspaper Le Journal, owned by Senator Charles Humbert, was to be one of the papers to carry misleading 'fake news'.