UBS executives told U.S. senators that the Swiss bank fears litigation from Jewish groups over Holocaust restitution claims as it refuses to release additional documents. The Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony about newly uncovered links between the Nazis and a Swiss banking conglomerate, amid an ongoing legal dispute over restitution to Holocaust victims. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), committee chair, told reporters before Tuesday’s hearing that an independent investigator found 890 accounts with potential Nazi links at Credit Suisse, which UBS acquired in 2023. “These accounts were once used by individuals or entities who participated in or assisted Nazi war efforts,” Grassley said. “That includes wartime accounts for the German Foreign Office, a German arms manufacturing company and the German Red Cross.” “Credit Suisse’s connection to all three of these entities was previously unknown, or only partially known,” Grassley told reporters. “The investigation also found evidence that Credit Suisse’s banking relationship with the SS was more extensive than we knew before.” Nazi Germany and members of the Nazi party had extensive relationships with Swiss banks before, during and after World War II, taking advantage of Swiss neutrality and the country’s banking secrecy laws to shelter assets, including wealth seized from Jews during the Holocaust.
via jns: Investigation uncovers hundreds of Nazi-linked accounts at Credit Suisse
sieeh auch: Hundreds of Swiss Bank Accounts With Suspected Nazi Links Found by Investigators. Revelations come as Swiss bank UBS uses legal fight to curb Jewish groups from reopening a decades-old settlement. UBS pointing triangle has said it wants to bring greater transparency to Switzerland’s dark chapter helping the Nazis in World War II. In Brooklyn federal court, UBS has a different message for the Jewish organization that asked for the Credit Suisse probe in 2020, the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Be quiet, and don’t ask us for any more money. The issue received an airing in Congress on Tuesday when UBS executives, a rabbi from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and an independent investigator delving into archives at UBS’s Credit Suisse unit testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The investigator, Neil Barofsky, told senators his probe has found much deeper ties between Credit Suisse and the Nazi war effort than previously known. These included bank accounts held by the German Foreign Office, which helped in the mass deportation of Jews to concentration camps in the Holocaust. SS, or Schutzstaffel, agents also had accounts at the bank, he said. In all, he said he found around 890 accounts potentially tied to Nazis. Barofsky said he found previously unreported examples of Credit Suisse carrying out forced transfers of Jewish clients’ assets into Nazi-affiliated banks. He also found indications that Credit Suisse helped fleeing officials resettle in Argentina after the war. For decades after World War II, Swiss banks turned away the families of Holocaust victims, saying they had no records of their loved ones’ accounts and assets. Neutral Switzerland denied suggestions it helped to finance the Nazis and prolonged their terror.
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