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(2) Any transfor delivery or

assignment by the Japanese authorit- ics of any property asscts or scouritics in the legal or bencficial possession or in the custody of or plodged or hypothecated to a bank or other institution or business placed in liquidation by the Japanese authorit- ics shall be null and void, and no person who has thereafter acquired possession or any interest therein by or under the authority of tho Japanese Authorities shall be doomed to have any title or claim thereto against such bank institution or business as may be the legal or bcneficial owner or bailec thereof and any such property assots and securities shall be restored without any compensation.

As the liquidation of banks and other businesses was ultra viros the occupying power, the liquidators had no right to dispose of the securities or assets. Even apart from the illegality of the liquidation the seizure and disposal of such property was illegal and enurod only to the enrichment of the enemy. The liquidators could pass no title to the property which according to the principles of international law may be reclaimed without compensation.

In this connection it may be mentioned that on January 4, 1943, the Department of Statc of the United States Government announced the text of a formal warning as to forced transfers of property in enemy occupied countries or controlled

territories.

The declaration was

in the name of the United States, the British Commonwealth, Russia, China and certain captive countries. The declaration was to the cffect that thesc countries "reservo all their rights to "doclaro invalid any transfors "of or dealings with property "rights and intcrcsts of any "description whatsocvor (a) "which are or have been situated "in the territories which have "come under the occupation or "control, direct or indirect, "of the Governments with which

they are at war (b) which belong "or have belonged to persons, "including juridical persons "rosidont in such territorics" This warning applics whether such transfers or dealings havo taken the form of opon looting or plunder or of transactions apparently legal in form evon when they purport to be voluntar- ily effected.

Those transactions and dealings were to be sifted out so that those which had boon carried out in bad faith should be sorted out after probing beneath any collusivo camouflago.

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