61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

concerned, it was stated that «individual claimants should look for satisfaction
of their claims solely to their national governments». The committee stated its
conviction that the governments of liberated countries would «undoubtedly
take the necessary steps for invalidating transfers made under duress». Likewise,
on the subject of stolen property moved to neutral countries, it stated:
«Every effort must be made to prevent the neutral States from defeating
the restitution programme by permitting their territory to be used, in
effect, as a refuge for stolen goods».
In the London Declaration of 5 January 1943 on the initiative of the British,
the Allies addressed the neutral states and claimed for themselves the general
right to declare property transfers invalid. The wording of the warning was as
follows:
«The Governments making this Declaration and the French National
Committee reserve all their rights to declare invalid any transfers of, or
dealings with, property, rights and interests of any description whatsoever
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, or which belong, or have belonged, to persons
(including juridical persons) resident in such territories. This warning
applies whether such transfers or dealings have taken the form of open
looting or plunder, or of transactions apparently legal in form, even when
they purport to be voluntarily effected.» 5
The Declaration encompassed all transfers of property, irrespective of whether
they were the result of obvious spoiling or were carried out within a systematic
occupation economy. From the Allied point of view, even the «voluntary nature»
of the transfer of assets or the fact that a fair price had been paid for objects of
value was not enough to remove the obligation to make restitution. Switzerland
must have felt itself all the more targeted by this Declaration as the Swiss
National Bank (SNB) had been criticised since 1942 on account of its gold transactions
with the Reichsbank. It was easy to see that the Allies primarily had these
transactions in mind. When Switzerland continued to purchase large amounts of
stolen gold from the German Reichsbank in 1943 and when such transactions
were also conducted with other neutral states – with Portugal in particular – the
Allies issued a renewed warning in unequivocal language in February 1944. 6
To increase the efficiency of its economic war effort, the USA began to systematically
collect economic data. This activity was later supplemented by the
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