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Bank and lawyer archives have not yet revealed all their secrets from the time of the Second World War, believes the former scientific advisor to the Bergier commission, Marc Perrenoud. He calls for them to be examined again, particularly those of UBS.
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January 7, 2025 – 05:25
(Keystone-ATS) “The Bergier commission discovered so much documentation that we could not go through it during the five years of our mandate,” from 1996-2001, explains the historian in an interview broadcast Tuesday by Le Temps, after A US Senate committee has revealed that Credit Suisse withheld information during previous investigations into bank accounts that belonged to Nazis. “We were under pressure. The federal decree was valid until December 31, 2001.”
In addition to the lack of time, Mr. Perrenoud points to the collaboration of the banks. “We suspected in certain cases [une] retention [d’information]but we were not informed of it and we had no proof.” The commission could have sent police inspectors to check, he adds, but “there was the risk of destruction of archives, as demonstrated by the Meili affair in the UBS case”.
“Not exhaustive” work at UBS
Former UBS guard Christoph Meili saved important archives from destruction in January 1997. In the context of the escheated funds affair, the Federal Council had enacted provisions guaranteeing access to the documents for researchers from the commissions Bergier and Volcker. The decree specified that documents should not be destroyed or made inaccessible.
Marc Perrenoud also notes the fact that the banks submitted archives to the Bergier commission very late. “For example, UBS sent us new information about clients at the end of our work. We then realized that the inventory we had received in 1997 was notoriously incomplete,” he says. “We would have to do the work in the UBS archives; it was not exhaustive.”
The independent commission of experts, commonly known as the Bergier commission, was established by the Federal Council in December 1996 to shed light on the affair of dormant funds and Switzerland’s role during the Second World War. It published a final report in March 2002, as well as dozens of studies.
