BELGIAN GOLD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24737, 14 October 1941, Page 3

BELGIAN GOLD

ACTION AGAINST BANK OF FRANCE FIRST ROUND WON (P.A.) WELLINGTON. Oct. 13. According to advice received from New York by the Consulate-general for Belgium in New Zealand, the National Bank of Belgium has just emerged victoriously from the first encounter with the Bank of France before an American tribunal. Immediately Belgium was invaded, the National Bank of that country entrusted part of its gold to the Bank of France with instructions to transfer it to a safe place in the British Empire or the United States of America. The Bank of France, however, sent the Belgian gold to Dakar. At the end of last year the Franco-German Commission at Wiesbaden, which is concerned with the execution of the armistice conditions imposed by Germany, took its own dispositions in respect to the Belgian gold. An agreement was concluded at Wiesbaden, and a start was immediately made to put it into execution. As soon as this agreement became known, however, the Belgian National Bank promptly obtained a writ of attachment upon such gold of the Bank of France es was lodged in the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, and took legal proceedings against the Bank of France, The Bank of France invoked in its appeal various exceptions to this procedure, among which the most important was its denial of the competence of an American tribunal in this matter.

By its decision on August 8, a New York tribunal rejected the exception invoked by the Bank fo France and declared itself competent. Its decision was amply substantiated. Belgium thus gained the first round of the contest. American newspapers have commented on the decision as a great triumph for the Belgian National Bank.