Swiss Banks Try to Hide Collaboration with Nazis

Did you know Switzerland has proudly maintained its neutrality since the position was formally recognized by the international community in 1815?

The only problem: two of its most prominent banks were collaborating with the Nazis.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), discovered new facts on Nazi-linked accounts and on the aid given to the Nazis.

The recent discoveries were revealed after the complicity became public in 2023:

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.

The collaboration was extensive and went far beyond the settlement of 1998 :

The scale of the deception is staggering. While previous audits identified only 100 suspicious accounts, this new probe — bolstered by the cooperation of Argentine President Javier Milei — uncovered nearly 900. World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder suggests that the 1998 $1.25 billion settlement was a fraction of what was owed, estimating that investigators ‘negotiated blind’ and left up to $10 billion on the table.

In recent years, UBS took over Credit Suisse, and that’s when the most recent controversy was uncovered by Neil Barofsky, the attorney hired to conduct the audit:

'In 2022, I was fired by Credit Suisse when I refused to go along with its efforts to suppress the truth,' Neil Barofsky told lawmakers, thanking Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) for helping him be reinstated. ‘In my testimony today, we talk about some of the previously unreported ties between Credit Suisse and some of the instrumentalities of the Nazi government,’ Barofsky said. ‘This includes accounts for something called the German Foreign Office,’ he explained. ‘When Hitler would invade a country, the German Foreign Office would get involved to help round up the Jews … herd them into ghettos, provincial transportation, into the concentration and extermination camps.

Most recently, UBS refused to turn over 150 documents because of the agreement reached as part of the 1998 settlement:

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, testifying for the SWC [Simon Wiesenthal Center], said that UBS is ‘actively blocking important aspects of Mr. Barofsky’s work’ and accused the bank of seeking to silence his organization.’ ‘When those with unlimited resources control the historical record, the issue is no longer about the past,’ said Cooper. ‘It is a warning about the present and the future. This isn’t just about dusty old papers in archives. This is about money in banks.’ He was referring to a request UBS filed in a New York court last month for an order confirming the settlement covers all possible claims, known and unknown at the time it was reached, and warning the SWC and other Jewish groups against publicly commenting on potential new revelations and obligations. UBS executives denied they were trying to silence the SWC and other Jewish groups but said the bank needed assurances that it wouldn’t be subject to lawsuits based on the material in the documents if it provided them.

Senator John Kennedy, in his inimitable manner, stated what was actually at risk:

‘Your position is you’re not paying a penny more, is that right?’ Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, asked Robert Karofsky, the head of UBS’s Americas business, in a courtroom-style cross-examination. ‘That is correct, Senator. It was accounted for in the unknown claims,’ Karofsky replied. Kennedy went on to advise Karofsky to consider the wider stakes. ‘The smart play here for you is to release these documents and let Mr. Barofsky finish his report and let the chips fall where they may, and then, in front of God and country, if you owe more money, then by God, pay it, because that’s what this is about.’

I think we will be seeing more about the Credit Suisse/UBS collaboration.