1 of 1 A flower can be seen on a slab of the Holocaust memorial in Berlin honoring the victims of National Socialism — Photo: Markus Schreiber/AP A flower can be seen on a slab of the Holocaust memorial in Berlin honoring the victims of National Socialism — Photo: Markus Schreiber/AP
A committee of U.S. lawmakers and senators said Tuesday (19) that Swiss bank Credit Suisse obstructed an investigation that the bank itself had used services the institution provided to Nazi customers or accounts linked to Nazis .
Credit Suisse hired investigators after a Jewish organization, Centro Simon Wiesenthal, claimed that some Nazis who fled to Argentina may have used bank accounts.
The US Senate set up a committee on the matter and concluded that the bank had botched the investigation and “inexplicably fired” an independent assessor acting as a regulator.
Credit Suisse has defended itself by saying the investigation found no evidence to support the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s main claims regarding dormant accounts managed by Credit Suisse that allegedly contained assets belonging to Holocaust victims.
understand the case
Many Germans went to Argentina in the 1930s and 1940s, and some of them were Nazis who fled after the fall of Adolf Hitler.
In 2020, the Simon Wiesenthal Antisemitism Research Center announced that it had uncovered information about Germans in Argentina in the 1930s and that this information could help locate bank accounts linked to these Nazis.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center indicated that some of the people who went to Argentina had accounts with Credit Suisse.
Credit Suisse executives said they would launch an investigation into funds deposited with the bank (the company had a different name in the 1930s, but it was the same bank).
Credit Suisse then hired two people to investigate account holders in the 1930s:
- An economic research firm, AlixPartners;
- Barofsky, an independent researcher recommended by the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Barofsky was a US prosecutor and now works for a law firm.
The Swiss bank had already conducted an investigation into the operations it conducted in Europe during the Nazi years: in the 1990s, assets belonging to victims of the Holocaust were identified. In 1998, two banks, Credit Suisse and UBS, agreed to end the issue.
Barofsky could not identify any accounts linked to Nazis that were still active, but he was not finished with his work.
What he discovered was that investigations in the 1990s failed to uncover some Nazi accounts. The bank does not share Barofsky’s assessment.
- Barofsky specifically cited a checking account controlled by a Nazi official and owned by a company that exploited Jews. This account was discovered by the bank way back in the 1990s, but later, in 2001, the bank said it hadn’t found any information about the company. Bank officials denied concealing this information: They told the US Congressional Committee that it was a historian who drew attention to the account’s records.
- Barofsky also wrote that the bank helped a Naziaffiliated businessman restructure a company that would be worth millions of dollars today, lest his assets be confiscated. Bank officials said the reorganization was done to hide the assets in the 1930s when the businessman broke with the Nazis, rather than during the war.
The size of the investigation
A team of 50 people went through about 480,000 documents, which took 50,000 manhours, the bank said.
“Investigators found no evidence to support the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s claims that numerous individuals out of a list of 12,000 individuals held accounts with Schweizerische Kreditanstalt (SKA), the bank that preceded Credit Suisse, in Argentina during the Nazi era.” , the statement said.
The investigation also found no evidence that eight longclosed accounts contained assets belonging to Holocaust victims, the report said.
The US Senate says there are blind spots
A US Senate special committee accused the bank of “limiting the scope of internal searches” and “leaving blind spots” in its investigations.
“When it comes to investigating questions of Nazism, the justice of the judiciary dictates that no detail be ignored,” said Senator Chuck Grassley, quoted in a Senate committee statement, noting the bank’s failure on this issue.
Lawmakers criticized Credit Suisse for being “rigorous” in its investigation and “refusing to investigate new leads.”
For its part, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which prosecutes Nazi criminals, pointed out that the bank’s decision to stop working with the mediator undermined its trust in a “fair, independent and transparent historical investigation”.