NAZI WEALTH

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 118, 21 May 1945, Page 5

NAZI WEALTH

UPPER CLASS ASSETS Living Expenses Limited By U.S. Authority N.Z. Press Association—Copyright Rec. noon. LONDON, May 20. The American Military Government has blocked the upper class Nazis' financial assets and limited them to living expenses of 300 marks (£7 10/) a month in order to ensure that their assets are not hidden or dissipated before legal claims can be determined, states the Associated Press correspondent at Fifteenth Army Headquarters. He adds that Lieutenant-Colonel Praather, Fifteenth Army financial expert, in announcing this, said that the American authorities had not attempted to deal with the return of property stolen from occupied territories or confiscated from the Jews. "Restitution will come later. Much of it will be handled by civilian courts in reconstituted Germany," he said.

Germans not listed by the Americans for mandatory arrest and financial freezing will be allowed to withdraw 1000 marks monthly for living expenses in continuation of the Third Reich's anti-inflation law. The German Government tax collectors will operate much as before the occupation. Colonel Praather predicted that pensions mostly would cease for the former loyal Nazi militarist servants, but . old pensions might continue when given for disabilities or awarded for dependent widows and orphans. He declared that there was a good chance of effecting occupation "without German financial collapse."