$790 Conflict

A year ago (TIME, Jan. 3, 1955), Russian-born Wolf Ladejinsky was fired as a security risk by the U.S. Department of Agriculture from his job as an Asian land-reform planner. The charges were aired and proved ridiculous; Ladejinsky was rehired by Harold Stassen's Foreign Operations Administration to work on land reform in Viet Nam. Last week the International Cooperation Administration (successor to FOA) announced that it had demanded and received Ladejinsky's resignation. This time the charges were about 100% different: Ladejinsky appeared as a capitalist investor--and in the economy of Nationalist China, at that.

Specifically, Ladejinsky was kicked out for having broken ICA's conflict-of-interest regulations by investing in a Formosan glassmaking company that had received some $600,000 in U.S. Government financing. ICA explained that Ladejinsky, while on an official mission to Formosa, gave a $3,000 check to a Chinese friend, who cashed it on the black market and bought stock in the glassmaking firm. Said ICA: "At the official rate of exchange, this check at that time would have purchaised 60 shares of stock. As a result of the higher rate of exchange obtained by this illegal transaction, 90 shares of stock were obtained on behalf of Mr. Ladejinsky.

"When the agency became aware of these facts and discussed them with Mr. Ladejinsky, he freely admitted the above actions." He thus seemed in clear violation of an ICA regulation that says: "No employee may transact, have a monetary interest in, or engage in any business or profession, for profit, in the country or countries to which he is assigned, either in his own name or in the name, or through the agency, of another person."

In Saigon, Ladejinsky said he had not known that the glass company was receiving U.S. money and that, after being questioned about his stock, he had sold it for a $790 profit.

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