TRADING WITH ENEMY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVII, Issue 221, 16 August 1927, Page 7

TRADING WITH ENEMY.

RELEASE OF PROPERTY. BRITAIN AND AMERICA. RUGBY, Aug. 14. The text has been issued of letters exchanged, and an agreement reached, between Great Britain and the United States regarding tho reciprocal release of property sequestrated under Trading With the Enemy Acts. The memorandum drawn up by the United States Government explains the conditions for the return to married women in tho United States and Great Britain of property which was seized during tho war. With regard to debt claims, the United States Trading With the Enemy Act authorises, on the basis of reciprocity, payment from the sequestrated property of debts owing to and owned by British claimants before the passage of the Act, provided that such debt, in the nature of a pledge or lien, arose in reference- to money or other property held by the custodian of alien property, or the Treasurer of the United States.

The position of the British Government is that in all cases where enemy businesses, whether conducted by corporation partnership or individual concerns, have been liquidated in Great Britain under the war legislation the claims of United States creditors, wherever resident, have been treated on an equal footing with those of British creditors. Another section of the memorandum sets out the respective positions of the two Governments in regard to shares or stock in the deposit account of German banks, and a further section deals with the cases in which the return of the assets of a corporation is permitted.

The British Foreign Office, in a letter accepting the memorandum’s statement of the position, adds that the British Government is prepared,, on being granted reciprocal treatment by the Government of the United States within the terms of the memorandum, to realise such property as is covered by the terms of the understanding and on the conditions stated therein. —British official wireless.