A license for Victor de Metz's dog

The start of the Second World War put the PSC in a high-risk situation. Prior to the Armistice (June 10, 1940), the PSC may have feared that the Germans would seek to resume its actions in Iraq Petroleum Cy, taken from Turkish Petroleum, confiscated from Deutsche Bank after the First World War. After the Armistice, the threat came from the western side: the PSC became a flagship enterprise of an enemy state, and therefore a potential target of the Allies. The PSC staff was fully aware of this: the rights of the Company had to be protected. Victor de Metz, director of the PSC, played the key role.

Before June 1940, he went to London every two weeks to attend the advice of Iraq Petroleum. From a British source, one day evokes - when precisely: end of May? early June ? - where V. de Metz made an appointment with a lawyer on the official grounds of requesting a license for his dog, in an England very active against rabies. It was a well-known PSC lawyer, Leslie Burgin, founder of the Dentons, Burgin and Hall study, who defended his interests in London, particularly in his dealings with Iraq Petroleum. In reality, Victor de Metz brought in his briefcase the certificates of the shares of the Company. On July 12, 1940 the PSC entered into the framework of the Trading with the Enemy Act; her rights and interests were to be placed in receivership with the Custodian of Enemy Property, which would normally appoint two directors to the IPC board to represent it. In August 1940, the firm Dentons, Burgin and Hall was chosen by the PSC to defend its interests; at the end of September, she was accepted to play the role of receiver, and it was Leslie Burgin who defended the interests of the PSC within the Consortium, without being a director. In September 1944, L. Burgin began to approach the British institutions so that the receiver of the PSC was lifted.