Considering Note Issue

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31269, 16 January 1967, Page 13

Considering Note Issue

(N.Z.P Jl.-Reuter— Copyright) FRANKFURT, Jan. 15. The Frankfurt Civil Court sat on Friday to consider whether the Rhodesian Government is legally entitled to issue banknotes. The ihree-member Court heard objections to a legal

order impounding 2.2 tons of new banknotes printed by a Munich firm for the Smith regime. Police unloaded the notes from a South African Airways flight last month only an hour before they were to be flown to Rhodesia. The Munich printers, Geisecke and Devrient, and South African Airways are contesting the interim injunction imposed on the consignment at the request of Sir Sydney Caine, the London-

based Governor of the Reserve Bank of Rhodesia. The British Government insists that he is the only person entitled to make new issues.

The consignment of crisp, new 10s, £1 and £5 notes was part of a 28-ton order. Even if the Court rules that the injunction is illegal, the money is likely to stay where it is as long as there are possibilities of appeal, according to judicial officials at Frankfurt.