Russia's Channel Ports
CAEDEMANN, CLAUS
Russia's Channel Ports Despite the West's embargo on such traffic, Western bankers are helping Moscow secure large quantities of strategic material via Antwerp and Rotterdam By Claus...
...What can be done to cut off Communist operations in Belgium and Holland...
...2 Raamweg, The Hague...
...The Banque Beige of Brussels, it was recently discovered, has been making big dollar deals with Red China through its Hong Kong offices...
...These bankers have honored their letters of credit and handled their Western currency accounts...
...They were listed as members of their ship's crew, but when the vessel left the harbor three other men were in their places...
...The West German cargo was to be transferred in Rotterdam to an allegedly Genoa-bound ship, but the vessel was to be detoured to Leningrad once it was on the open sea...
...The answer to the problem, therefore, seems to rest with the Western bankers...
...Statex submitted export-license applications to the authorities in Bonn for a 10,000-ton cargo of West German copper, aluminum, lead and cobalt...
...As long as these transactions continue, no effective measures can be enforced against the Communist operation...
...While under interrogation, Gandini explained the Statex plan...
...An equal number of tramp ships traveling under Dutch, Greek, Finnish and Panamanian flags leave them for Leningrad, Rostock, Gdynia and Hong Kong—the latter is the receiving point for Red China-bound cargo...
...A year ago, three Communist British sailors who were "graduates" of an East German school for agents left their Polish ship in Rotterdam and took a ferry to England...
...In this case, the Dutch freighter Plato was scheduled for the job, but very often a Russian or Polish ship is involved and its alleged destination is a country in South America...
...officials as untouchable "in transit" goods...
...Communist agents and printed propaganda also enter the West through Antwerp and Rotterdam...
...Consequently, the East managed to smuggle an estimated $700 million worth of strategic Western material through these countries last year...
...It passes through the hands of U.S...
...Italian police traced them to Pompeo Gandini, Statex agent in Milan, and Pio Tacchi-Venturi, an economics professor in Rome who admitted forging the documents from forms and stamps counterfeited in Switzerland...
...In all, eleven banks in Belgium and Holland are handling this business...
...The West will merely continue to strengthen the hand that threatens to strike it down...
...The Communists have been successful because they have succeeded in interesting respectable, non-political Western European bankers in their business...
...Russia's Channel Ports Despite the West's embargo on such traffic, Western bankers are helping Moscow secure large quantities of strategic material via Antwerp and Rotterdam By Claus Gaedemann Brussels Large quantities of strategic war materials vital to Russia's industries are being shipped from the West via Antwerp and Rotterdam...
...Through their overseas branches, too, they handle Communist transactions all over the globe...
...Last August, for example, 24 crates of Communist brochures, printed in the Hausa language of West Africa, were unloaded from a Soviet freighter in Antwerp and stored in the free harbor...
...Occasionally these firms manage to secure Dutch or Belgian export licenses and send material eastward on land through West Germany...
...Inquiries revealed, however, that the import licenses did not originate at the Ministry of Foreign Trade in Rome...
...Throughout Western Europe, firms have been set up for the sole purpose of purchasing material needed by the Soviet Union and her puppet states...
...This was brought to light in a case involving the Statex Commercial Corporation, located at No...
...They work with organizations that have mushroomed in the grey business buildings of Brussels, The Hague and Amsterdam...
...According to the applications, the cargo was to travel via Holland to an Italian destination, and Italian import licenses were furnished to substantiate this claim...
...The Kremlin finds these ports convenient to the bulk of Western Europe's industrial areas, and between them they accommodate thirty vessels each month that fly the hammer and sickle...
...At most, they point out, only 15 per cent of the illegal Iron Curtain traffic can be stopped, because it is difficult to get concrete evidence against those who handle it...
...The latter, in turn, receive their orders from state procurement agencies in Warsaw, Prague, Moscow, East Berlin and Peking, and they have no scruples about their methods of operation...
...Two days later, the crates, labeled "automobile spare parts," were loaded in a Panamanian vessel headed for Senegal harbor...
...As for propaganda, this is being channeled to all of the free world's underdeveloped areas...
...Western customs and police officials claim they can do little...
...During the six months that followed the discovery of this incident, authorities estimated that at least 114 "students" had infiltrated various parts of the West this way...
...By putting an end to Communist activity here, the free world can achieve a major victory in the cold war...
Vol. 37 • March 1954 • No. 12
