GOVERNMENT: World Court Case?

Ever since the U.S. seized General Aniline & Film Corp. as a German enemy asset in 1942, the Justice Department has fought a running battle to hang on to it. Last week the Swiss government, which argues that General Aniline was really controlled by Swiss and other non-enemy interests, asked the United Nations International Court of Justice at The Hague to decide who really owns General Aniline. It is a rich prize: under U.S. stewardship, New York-based General Aniline has grown into a vast chemical and camera-supply (Ansco) empire with assets of $163 million and sales last year of $133 million.

In a two-part suit Switzerland demanded that the U.S. either return General Aniline to the Swiss Interhandel holding company that ran it until 1942 or submit the case to an international panel of arbiters. The U.S. in the past has refused arbitration. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles has been talking a lot lately about the rule of law in international affairs, but last week the Department said it will not decide whether it will let the case go to the World Court until after it is formally served with a copy of the suit.

The U.S. is a founder of the court, but it has never been a defendant there, and it cannot be brought to trial unless it agrees to go voluntarily. It could refuse the court’s jurisdiction on the ground that General Aniline is a domestic issue; General Aniline is a U.S.-based firm that was confiscated under the U.S. Trading with the Enemy Act. And the court itself may refuse to referee the fight because the General Aniline seizure took place four years before the court was created in 1946.

The legal issue hinges on the U.S. charge that General Aniline’s parent, Interhandel, was really a front for Nazi Germany’s I. G. Farben. But Swiss-based Interhandel and 1,500 of its stockholders proclaimed that they were not German-controlled; in a maze of litigation they tied up persistent U.S. attempts to sell off General Aniline stock to the public. U.S. lower courts and a Federal Court of Appeals turned down Interhandel’s plea for a return of the stock. The loss in court was largely the Swiss government’s own fault; its stiff banking laws, reflecting the Swiss financier’s passion for secrecy, prevented Interhandel from opening its books to produce evidence that it was not enemy-dominated. Last year the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the ruling. Even though the Interhandel plaintiffs have again appealed to the ‘high court for review and other suits by some Interhandel stockholders are still alive, the Justice Department said this year that General Aniline would at last go on the block.