Since its takeover by UBS, an independent team led by lawyer and former US Attorney Neil Barofsky is once again analyzing Credit Suisse’s archives. In mid-December, she submitted an interim report to the US Senate, which is also investigating the banking establishment’s troubled past.
And its content – based on the sorting of archives dating from the 1930s and 1940s – caused a stir in Switzerland and the United States. “Washington makes serious accusations”, notably commented on the Zurich newspaper New Zurich newspaper.
The Wall Street Journal had access to the document provided by the investigators. According to him, it proves that the reparations of 1.8 billion francs paid in 1998 to Holocaust survivors and their descendants “could just be a sham”.
“Investigators went through several registers and microfilms that had not been examined during previous investigations, and discovered that the bank had tried to cover up the affair,” assures the American newspaper. In the 1990s, important information about its former Nazi clients was allegedly not transmitted by Credit Suisse to the competent authorities.
“American blacklist”
A banker who robbed Jews of their property, a Swiss intermediary in the service of the Nazis, a German industrialist who profited from the forced labor of concentration camp inmates… “What these individuals and institutions, and many others, have in common: they clearly held accounts with Credit Suisse around the Second World War and were not identified until then,” writes the Swiss daily Time, after the revelations of the American title.
An account belonging to senior SS officers was notably discovered. Stamped files “American blacklist” were also found. This indication was “used by the Allies to identify individuals or entities who supported the Nazis”. In total, hundreds of accounts and suspected intermediaries are being examined by investigators.
Neil Barofsky has been working on the links between Credit Suisse and the Nazis since 2021, when he was tasked by the bank with clarifying accusations made by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an American NGO fighting anti-Semitism and racism. . But his work was not appreciated by the banking establishment, which “tried in vain to limit the scope of his investigation” and fired him in 2022.
He was not reinstated until 2023, after the takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS. According to the Geneva newspaper, UBS is today “praised for her cooperation and her desire to shed light on this inglorious past”.
