Word: bartering
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Delaware's Republican Senator John J. Williams started these rumblings last week by revealing that 24 million bushels of surplus U.S. livestock feed grains had somehow gone astray. The grain was supposed to have been shipped to Austria between 1959 and 1962 in a complex intergovernmental barter deal, but Administration officials admitted that international grain dealers had apparently reaped lush profits by illegally diverting most of the stuff to West Germany and selling it there...
...reached Austria. Six Austrian grain importers were arrested and released on bail ranging up to $200,000, one of the highest figures in the country's history, for "mis-labeling." Since the U.S. Government demands cash or letters of credit in advance from U.S. exporters involved in grain barter deals, the U.S. stands to incur no direct losses...
Either somebody in the U.S. was acting dishonestly, muttered Senator Williams, or "there's something radically wrong with the laws," and he may well be right about that. The Agriculture Department's regulations governing international barter transactions are so loose that they invite dishonesty. According to one observer, "anybody would have to be nuts to be honest in this business...
Since the U.S. has negotiated similar barter deals involving $1.6 billion worth of agricultural commodities over the past 13 years, it was a pretty safe bet that U.S. agricultural attaches in many a foreign capital were hurriedly digging into the records to see who else has not been nuts...
...since E.N.I, is by far their biggest commercial foreign customer. And E.N.I., which is currently building refineries in seven countries, wants Soviet oil to meet its growing demands. A diversified industrial complex as well as an oil company, E.N.I, has found trading with Russia doubly advantageous because it can barter manufactured goods for oil; 90% of the synthetic rubber from its big Ravenna petrochemical plant went to Russia last year, and so did a wide assortment of its pumps, compressors and other machines. In a little-publicized deal, E.N.I, has also designed and is equipping a combined ammonia-methanol plant...