The Americans of the 7th Army discovered looted art treasures hidden by the Nazis. Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
In a pantry in Buenos Aires, an Argentine explorer made a discovery that would reverberate in a meeting room more than 11,000 km away.
Pedro Filippuzzi unearthed what is claimed to be researchers were files revealing the names of 12,000 undercover Nazis who lived in a Latin American country in the 1940s and had bank accounts with a Swiss lender: the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt, later renamed Credit Suisse.
Filipuzzi turned over more than 500 pages of documents to the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), a human rights organization known for hunting down Nazis. The group released this material in early 2020.
The SWC allegation was explosive: the Swiss bank is still harboring previously unknown dormant accounts that held assets stolen from Holocaust victims.
< p>B Response Credit Suisse launched an investigation and said last month it found no evidence to support the SWC's claims that many individuals on the list held accounts with Credit Suisse during Adolf Hitler's rule.
However, a US Senate committee rejected Credit Suisse's position and instead accused the lender of stalling its own investigation. After using its powers of subpoena, the committee received a devastating internal bank report alleging that Credit Suisse had over 100 previously unknown Nazi accounts.
Credit Suisse subsequently attempted to discredit the report, claiming it contained ” numerous factual errors” and was based “on an incomplete understanding of the facts.”
The controversy begs the question: are Swiss banks still unable to disclose their links to the Nazis?
US soldier inspects thousands of gold wedding bands rings taken from the Jews by the Nazis. Photo: National Archives/Hulton Archive
The Swiss banking system is well known for its high levels of privacy thanks to bank secrecy laws.
In 1934, the Swiss government passed a new Banking Law, under which the disclosure of account information to third parties without the consent of the client and permission to create anonymous bank accounts.
This allowed persecuted Jews to open accounts to hide their assets, but also opened the door to the Nazis, who became clients thanks to the country's neutral status in World War II.
Swiss creditors ceased to exist. played a central role in financing the Third Reich at a time when it faced harsh sanctions from the Allied Powers.
During the war, the Swiss were content to exchange the gold they stole from the Jews for Swiss francs, which at that time was the only transferable currency other than the US dollar.
Mark Piet, professor of criminal law at the University of Basel, says that about 80% of the gold that belonged to the Nazis was transferred to Switzerland during the war years, and the rest went to Italy, Portugal and Turkey. He adds that about 90% of the gold sent to Switzerland was deposited with the Swiss National Bank.
After the war, the Allied powers insisted on investigating the bank accounts of German citizens in the Alpine country. . Ultimately, however, the Swiss did not agree to liquidate all accounts and pay the assets as compensation.
It was only after international counterparts threatened sanctions in the 1990s that the country's financial sector began to properly reckon with its Nazi past .
In 1998, two Swiss banks, Credit Suisse and UBS, pledged to settle lawsuits with Holocaust victims. and their relatives for $1.25bn (£990m), which seems to be the end of the saga.
This was before the apparent discovery of 12,000 new accounts belonging to Nazi exiles. Disputed files threaten to reopen a dark period in Swiss banking history.
Credit Suisse has engaged forensic firm AlixPartners to conduct a new investigation, and Neil Barofsky, a partner at law firm Jenner & Block was hired as an independent ombudsman.
Last month, the US Senate Budget Committee accused Credit Suisse of obstructing the investigation, “inexplicably” removing Barofsky in November.
U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley said Credit Suisse left the stones intact in the investigation. Photo: Carolyn Custer/AP
However, the committee received Barofsky's 205-page report, dated February 15, 2023, following the issuance of the subpoena.
The report is scathing and claims that Credit Suisse appears to have kept the accounts – the vast majority of which were previously undisclosed – for nearly 100 people who were either high-ranking Nazi officials in Germany or members of Nazi-linked groups in Argentina.
It is claimed that after 1945, 70 Argentinean accounts were opened at the bank, with probable ties to the Argentine Nazis, and at least 14 of these accounts remained open into the 21st century, and some even into 2020.
< p> In the meantime, investigators have identified 21 accounts from a list of notorious high-ranking Nazis provided by the SWC, including one that belonged to a Nazi commander convicted at Nuremberg and another that belonged to an SS commander who was convicted.
The convicted commander's account remained open until 2002, but the bank has yet to provide information about the assets in that account or the 85 other identified accounts, the report says. The report also claims that Credit Suisse's willingness to cooperate with the investigation changed dramatically last summer due to a change in leadership.
Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, a member of the committee, said Credit Suisse, which was recently bailed out by UBS's biggest competitor in humiliating state-sponsored takeover – left the stones untouched in the investigation of his connections with the Nazis.
He said: “While Credit Suisse initially agreed to investigate evidence of previously unidentified Nazi-linked accounts as a result of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s relentless pursuit of justice, the information we received shows that the bank set unnecessarily rigid and narrow limits and refused to follow up on new leads unearthed. during verification.
A historian invited by Barofsky said that the SWC's findings revealed “new and important facts” that contribute to “historical knowledge” about “CS banks' relationship with the Nazi regime.”
However, Credit Suisse attempted to discredit the report, stating that it contains “numerous factual errors, misleading and unsubstantiated assertions, and unsubstantiated assertions based on an incomplete understanding of the facts.”
The Bank stated: “Investigators have found no evidence to support the SWC’s allegations that many individuals of the Argentinean list of 12,000 names had accounts with Schweizerische Kreditanstalt (SKA), the predecessor bank of Credit Suisse, during the Nazi period.
“The investigation also found no evidence that eight long-closed accounts were identified during this period contained the assets of any Holocaust victims.”
SWC vowed to continue investigating whether Swiss banks were hiding information about their Nazi assets. As Credit Suisse prepares to integrate with its worst rival, Nazi gold will be one in a long list of issues UBS will have to contend with.
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