Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1944, The American Republics, Volume VII

740.24112 RP/82

The Chargé in Bolivia (Woodward) to the Secretary of State

[Extract]

No. 3692

La Paz, May 8, 1944.
[Received May 16.]

Sir: I have the honor to refer to the proposed program to replace Axis firms in Bolivia and to this Embassy’s strictly confidential despatch No. 3488 of April 7, 1944,³⁶ in which it was reported that a number of the major Proclaimed List firms (including Kyllmann, Bauer y Cía., Juan Eisner y Cía., Zeller de Mozer y Cía., and the Bernardo Eisner (PL)³⁷ and Joaquin Bauer (PL) interests) had petitioned the Economic Defense Board of Bolivia for permission to transfer their assets to certain Bolivian employees and to Bolivian-born heirs of the present Axis owners. The despatch under reference reported that the Economic Defense Board had referred the petitions to the Bolivian Fiscal de Gobierno (Government Legal Counsellor) and that it was generally believed that the motivation behind the proposed transfers was to avoid any possible effects of the two expropriation decrees promulgated by the Provisional Government of Bolivia (see this Embassy’s despatches No. 3188 under date of February 18, 1944, and No. 3200 under date of February 19, 1944³⁸).

The Embassy has learned that the Bolivian Fiscal de Gobierno has furnished the Economic Defense Board with a legal opinion to the effect that the proposed transfers are legal under existing Bolivian law, that the Board convened on May 4, 1944, to consider the opinion and the proposed transfers, and that the Board now finds itself in the dilemma of reconciling Bolivian law with what it believes to be the questionable legality of the recently promulgated expropriation decrees and its desires to accede to the spirit of the Resolutions of the Inter-American Conference on Systems of Economic and Financial Control³⁹ as an evidence of cooperation with the war effort of the United Nations.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Respectfully yours,

For the Chargé d’Affaires a.i.

Walter P. McConaughy

Commercial Attaché

36. Not printed.
37. Proclaimed List.
38. Neither printed.
39. For correspondence on the Conference held at Washington, see Foreign Relations, 1942, vol. v, pp. 58 ff.; for texts of the 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, June 30–July 10, 1942 (Washington, 1942).