BOLIVIAN CONCESSION

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 169, 12 April 1930, Page 11

BOLIVIAN CONCESSION

ALLEGATIONS OF FRAUD London, April 2. Allegations of fraudulent misrepresentations, whereby European settlers were induced to emigrate to Bolivia and to attempt to make a living there under cruel conditions, were made in the King’s Bench Division to-day. Robert Sohr, formerly emigration otficer of Bolivian Concessions, Ltd., sued the company and directors for alleged fraudulent conspiracy, and also for wrongful dismissal. Plaintiff’s case, his counsel said, was that the company proposed to establish a port in Bolivia, to organise docks, warehouses, and a steamship line, and also to settle on its concession thousands of Spanish, Italian, and other European families. The British Consul at La Paz cabled that the concession consisted of swampy land which was inundated for six months in every year. Counsel for Sohr told the Court that his client became so worried about his inability to obtain exact information of local conditions that he decided, on his own responsibility, to go to Bolivia, after the directors had refused to send him. It was a horrible journey, owing to dysentery and insects.