By Kevin Seabrooke
On Capitol Hill Tuesday, February 3, executives from the Swiss financial giant UBS were grilled by Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee over accusations that the bank was obstructing an investigation into accounts linked to Nazis at Credit Suisse.
At issue are some 150 documents that UBS officials have reportedly refused to turn over to the independent ombudsman overseeing the probe. An ongoing investigation into previously unreported relationships between the bank and Nazis is being overseen by attorney Neil Barofsky, a former Treasury official. Barofsky was hired in 2021 to oversee a review conducted by forensics firm AlixPartners after the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) alleged that Credit Suisse had held Nazi-related accounts long after the war. After pressuring Barofsky to limit the scope of the investigation, Credit Suisse terminated his contract in 2022.
UBS (named after the merger of the Union Bank of Switzerland and the Swiss Bank Corporation) acquired Credit Suisse in a 2023 emergency takeover facilitated by the Swiss government and the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, rehired Barofsky to complete the investigation.
From the end of World War II into the 1950s, the escape of former Nazi officials, SS members and other German war criminals used a system of networks and operatives called “ratlines” that allowed them to escape to South America and the Middle East.
In 2020, the Simon Wiesenthal Center announced that its investigations into these ratlines suggested that some 12,000 Nazis or Nazi sympathizers in Argentina may have held accounts at a Credit Suisse predecessor containing money looted from Jewish families.They also alleged that authorities in Argentina used a Credit Suisse account with today’s equivalent of $22 million to finance the ratlines.
U.S. politicians and the SWC, have campaigned for a reckoning, alleging that there are nearly 900 Nazi accounts in Swiss banks that were not revealed before the 1998 settlement. According to Barofsky, who presented a 73-page update of the investigation on Tuesday, the bank held an account for the economic arm of the Nazi SS, an allegation it had denied in the 1990s.
UBS has argued that a 1998 legal settlement—in which Swiss banks paid $1.25 billion for their handling of Holocaust victims’ accounts—prevents these historical claims from being reopened.
UBS Americas President Robert Karofsky admitted that the company feared that each piece of new evidence from the investigation would lead to another lawsuit.
Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) told him, “If you owe more money, then by God, pay it.”
Gotta love John Kennedy!
A few points should be remembered. The Swiss acted within international law at the time. Both Germany and the Allies used Swiss facilities when it was advantageous. Both sides knew the other was also active. Assets left after the war were patriated to the proper claimants if they could be identified. The efforts to find individuals or their survivors, mainly Jewish and other refugees, was not exactly pursued with vigor. (Same goes for museums and art houses that acquired Jewish owned classics seized by the Nazis) There was certainly little to commend the behavior of some “neutral” financial institutions during the conflict. Of course, Credit Suisse and other financial institutions who now want to play leading financial roles in the EU want to clean up the past with as little notice as possible. That will probably not happen.
The Swiss also made 88mm shells for the Germans that shot the undercarage off my Dade’s B 25 over Foggia.