CO129-605-3 Chinese charitable funds and other deposit accounts 13-5-1948 - 3-9-1948 — Page 11

3. On the general question of

responsibility for the loss of funds

fidu

diciary

by a person who holds them in a

capacity, it is agreed that in law a

greater care as a custodian cannot be

imposed upon him than that of keeping

them as he would his own. Certainly

the safest way of keeping money is to

lodge it with a banker, and in regard

to the funds under discussion, in what-

ever category they fall, the Hong Kong

Government was doing the proper thing

in lodging them with the Hong Kong &

Shanghai Bank. But the question of

responsibility does not end there.

In paying certain of these funds into

the general Government Account the

Hong Kong Government not only kept the

money as they kept their own but kept

the money as their own and the question

arises whether,being thus represented

as Government property, the funds were

exposed to additional risk of

confiscation.

4.

This point

this connection, it must be

noted that whereas it is quite clear

>

from Article 53 of the Hague Regulations

that an occupying power may appropriate

cash, funds and realisable securities

belonging to the hostile state, private

funds are in international law protected

from confiscation (see Oppenheim's

International Law, Fifth Edition,

Volume II(VI), para.143).

It was

/the

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