GERMAN ASSETS IN SWITZERLAND

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24882, 23 May 1946, Page 5

GERMAN ASSETS IN SWITZERLAND

DISTRIBUTION AMONG ALLIES

( Rec. 9,p.m.) WASHINGTON, May M. Britain, America, and France have won a share in the hundreds of millions of dollars of German assets in Switzerland.

The United States State Department has announced that a general agreement has been reached under which w , i . t s e^!? nd J .. will (1) turn over 58,140.000 dollars of the estimated 130,000,000 dollars in gold looted from other countries and sold or deposited by the Nazis in Switzerland; (2) share with the three Western Powers and other Allies on a fifty-fifty basis the proceeds to be realised from the liquidation of German properties, whose value is estimated as high as 700,000,000 dollars. The State Department added that the accord, though not yet completed, provided a satisfactory method ot preventing the use ot German assets for financing a new war. Officials said that the 58.140.000 dollars would be divided among France. Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and other nations from which the Nazis looted gold. Britain and America had agreed not to claim any gold. Both, howevdr. under the Paris reparations agreement of January 15, were entitled to 28 per cent, of whatever money was realised by the Allies in liquidating Nazi properties in Switzerland. France would get . P er cent - Jugoslavia was next with 6.6 per cent. Russia, under the terms ot the Paris pact, to which she had agreed would not share in the Nazi aasets in Switzerland.