Collectible Stocks and Bonds from North American Railroads
by Terry Cox
Form TFEL-2
 

This is certificate bears a U.S. Treasury Department Seal and is sporadically found attached to bonds (and occasionally stocks). The certificates encountered so far seem to be dated from 1941 to 1943.

A correspondent finally helped solve this long-running mystery by directing me to a huge page of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States. One of those pages explains, in detail, the issues involved in freezing assets of Germany and its conquered nations during World War II. See Chapter III, Assets in the United States.

Similar to the freezing assets of terrorist in today's world, the U.S. attempted to prevent hostile interests from trading securities and thereby funding enemy war efforts. Of course, the securities of victims from those same countries were also inadvertently blocked.

It turns out that TFEL-2 was a form that allowed friendly, non-hostile foreign nationals to trade American securities during the war. Quoting Chapter III, Assets in the United States , this curious form, TFEL-2, was

  attached to securities "if the owners could prove that they were free from any blocked interest." The Treasury Department addressed many of these problems through certification, an expedient somewhat similar to the European practice of affixing tax stamps to legitimately acquired securities. Treasury's certification (using Form TFEL-2) could be attached to securities "if the owners could prove that they were free from any blocked interest."

(Thanks to Neal Greenberg for helping solve this problem.)

Example of TFEL-2 stapled to $500 Northern Pacific Railway Company bond,

(I do NOT track occurrences of TFEL-2, so there is no need to report them to me.)

 

 
 

 
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