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THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES

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THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES

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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

(b)

-3-

(ii) that in three particular cases which were

investigated, where the debts totalled respectively HK.$5,972,387.86,

HK.$606,856.00, and HK.$245,965.05, the debtors of whom the first was a non-

Chinese and the others Chinese, were throughout at the mercy of the Japanese and although they were requested to pay and had considerable means in the Colony were never subjected to any pressure and

never did pay.

(iii) that in the case of a Paraes debtor who has

himself submitted all the correspondence between himself and the Japanese he received in August 1943 the usual polite letter reques- ting him to pay his overdraft of HK.$1,676,107.43 and the interest thereon. Having waited a few months without any further approach, he volunteered to pay the whole debt in the hope that his humble request to be forgiven the interest which amounted to a considerable

sun.

However, between November 1943 and May 1944, he paid the whole debt with interest and thereby obtained the release from the liquidator of securities to the pre-war value of over HK.$2,200,000. which were under charge to the Bank. He paid the whole debt, according to his own statement, by the sale of a small portion of his holding of shares in the Union Insurance Society of Canton at prices in Military Yen which showed how grossly the Yen had depreciated by that time. that of the total payments of approximately the equivalent of twenty million Hong Kong dollars made to the liquidator about 80% of them were made by a group of eighty big debtors all of whom except one Parsee being Chinese firms,