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THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES

CO 537/1374

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leaflet.

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MEMORANDUM ON DEBTOR CREDITOR LEGISLATION.

The protest must again be made in the plainest and qoʻt unequivocal terms that the whole conception of the draft legislation is fundamentally repugnant to the principles of English as well as those of Public International Law and that there appears no ground either morally or otherwise to justify the application to British-liberated territories in the Far East of an Ordinance which is in clear opposition to the princ- iples of law as applied in all countries which are signatories or accessories to the Hague Convention.

The proposed legislation places the onus and reproach

on the British Government of repudiating the hitherto established and agreed view that the appointment of liquidators as by the Japanese in territory occupied by their armies during the war with power to collect and confiscate debts due to enemy subjects was illegal. It further, in effect, involves the acceptance as principles of English law

(D)

(a) that the appointment by the Japanese of such

liquidators with power to seize and confie- cate the private funds of local branches of British Banks in occupied territory was legal; that payment to the Japanese liquidator of a pre-war debt due to a British Bank was payment to such liquidator on behalf of the Bank. Such views whether specifically accepted or inferen- tially drawn are clearly repugnant to British law as epplied both at home and in the Colonies and cannot be reconciled with the acceptance of the Hague Convention of 1907 or with the Inter- Allied Declaration which His Majesty's Government made in London on January 5, 1943, and with the Explanatory Memorandum issued by all the seventeen parties to the Declaration on the subject of acte committed in territories under enemy occupation.

This declaration was acknowledged in a recent decision in the Court of First Instance of Manila (Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation v. Luis Perez-Samanillo, Inc., and Register of Deeds of Manila) which held that a payment to a Japanese liquidabr of a pre-war debt was not to any extent a discharge of the obligation to the rightful oreditor irrespectivaly of the currency in which it was paid. A copy of the judgment is attached hereto.

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restrictions. Further information is given in the enclosed Terms and Conditions of supply of National Archives' leaflet. Please note that this copy is supplied subject to the National Archives' terms and conditions and that your use of it may be subject to copyright