That 7,287 persons should have filed suits up to last week claiming a share in the $30,000,000 estate of Venezuela’s late Dictator Juan Vicente Gómez is natural enough. His country’s big man for 27 years, he died aged 78 (TIME, Dec. 30, 1935) probably more times a father, grandfather and great-grandfather than any man since Augustus the Strong.*
The Venezuelan Government confiscated $22,500,000 worth of property and securities from the Gómez estate, but that still left $7,500,000 worth. Last week the Government guardedly announced that about 4,300 of the more meritorious claimants will be awarded shares in the remaining $7,500,000. First, what little of the estate is liquid or in cash will be divided. The rest of the $7,500,000 the Government will pay by issuing Venezuelan bonds against the actual property, for financial experts deemed it “most inadvisable to make payments other than in bonds, as to do so might cause inflation in Venezuela and raise the level of prices.”
* According to one German count, King Augustus, who died in 1733, begot of 700 mistresses 354 children, many of them highly prolific.