Office of the Historian

840.51 Frozen Credits/10678: Telegram

The Ambassador in Ecuador (Scotten) to the Secretary of State

Quito, June 11, 1943—9 p.m.
[Received June 12—12:05 p.m.]

516. Reference Embassy’s monthly reports on operations of freezing control and other communications regarding draft of new reference control decree under consideration by Ecuadorean Government.

The President55 today signed decree number 854 which supplements and amplifies number 171 and which the Embassy considers satisfactory. It gives power to the Minister of Hacienda to carry out most of the important measures suggested in the draft decree and specifically the power to suspend or prohibit transactions and contracts by persons on the Proclaimed List and to vest, administer, liquidate or transfer properties belonging to such persons. No provision is made for implementation of resolutions 2, 3 and 4 of the Washington Conference on Systems of Economic and Financial Control.56

No specific arrangements have been made as yet for regulations of decree or administration’s organization. Embassy will urge adequate implementation the developments.

Decree number 854 is brief and completely different in form from the draft submitted to the Department with Embassy’s despatch No. 3721, November 4, 1942,57 and the Embassy was not shown the new form before the third signed.

Copy of new decree with comments will be presented to the Department by air mail.

Repeated to Guayaquil.

Scotten
  1. Carlos A. Arroyo del Río.↩
  2. For text of these resolutions, see Pan American Union, Congress and Conference Series No. 39: final act of the inter-american conference on systems of economic and financial control (Washington, 1942); for correspondence concerning this Conference, held at Washington June 30–July 10, 1942, see Foreign Relations, 1942, vol. v, pp. 58 ff.↩
  3. Despatch No. 3721 printed in Foreign Relations, 1942, vol. vi, p. 420; enclosed draft not printed.↩