US senators criticise Credit Suisse over Nazi bank account claims

Budget panel questions Swiss institution’s commitment to independent ombudsman’s inquiry

April 18, 2023

Credit Suisse deliberately sought to hamper an investigation into Nazi assets last year that claimed the bank had serviced “scores” of undisclosed accounts, according to US senators — with at least one account linked to a senior SS officer that was open until 2002.

A confidential report by the bank’s own former ombudsman, subpoenaed and released by the US Senate Budget committee on Tuesday, said that despite public assurances, Credit Suisse in effect decided in June last year to “walk away from its commitment” to thoroughly investigate its former Nazi clients.

The allegation relates to a probe launched in 2020 at Credit Suisse into allegations by the Simon Wiesenthal Center human rights organisation that thousands of émigré Nazis in Argentina had potentially used accounts at the bank to salt away money illicitly — some of it said to have been directly looted from murdered Jews.

Credit Suisse promised a thorough, no holds-barred investigation into the claims, and appointed corporate consultants AlixPartners to assess the Wiesenthal centre’s evidence.

An independent ombudsman, Neil Barofsky, a partner at Jenner & Block, was appointed to oversee the investigation and its terms.

On Tuesday, Credit Suisse claimed that the AlixPartners investigation had exonerated it of wrongdoing.

“Investigators found no evidence to support the SWC’s allegations that many individuals on an Argentine list of 12,000 names had accounts at [Credit Suisse] during the Nazi period,” the bank said in a statement.

Investigators at AlixPartners had been given unfettered access to databases on “millions” of historical Credit Suisse accounts, it stressed.

There was “no evidence” of any assets of Holocaust victims being held by the bank, it said, adding that the research confirmed the conclusions reached by the landmark Bergier Commission that investigated and settled matters pertaining to Swiss banks’ links to Nazi Germany in the late 1990s.

US senators rejected that conclusion, however, and published Barofsky’s own report — which the bank had opted to keep secret — into the nature of the AlixPartners investigation.

Credit Suisse maintained accounts — mostly until now undisclosed — for “at least 99 individuals who were either senior Nazi officials in Germany or members of Nazi-affiliated groups in Argentina”, the Senate committee said. The committee interviewed Barofsky and senior Credit Suisse executives, including the bank’s general counsel, ahead of releasing its findings.

The committee said its own review of evidence it had subpoenaed, centred on Barofsky’s report, concluded at least 14 accounts “remained open into the 21st century”.*

Among the account holders were senior SS commanders, a Nazi scientist and one officer sentenced for war crimes at Nuremberg. His account was open until 2002.

The bank has not provided any disclosure to internal investigators as to whether relatives of the individuals had access to the accounts and withdrew money.

The bank had initially been highly co-operative, Barofsky’s report — dated February 15 — concluded, allowing AlixPartners to identify 80 accounts of individuals in Argentina who were members of the Nazi party. In June last year, however, the bank “abruptly” changed course, it continues.

“Credit Suisse then began a series of actions to curtail and eventually terminate the investigation, thereby falling short of the standards set by its former chairmen and the assurances provided by its most recent executives,” his report states.

“The information we’ve obtained shows the bank established an unnecessarily rigid and narrow scope, and refused to follow new leads uncovered during the course of the review,” said Senator Chuck Grassley, the senior Republican on the budget committee.

“Its removal of an independent ombudsperson and insistence on redacting portions of his report as well as its initial refusal to pursue leads on accounts that may be associated with Nazi ratlines is no way to conduct a thorough and complete investigation.”

Credit Suisse said it was fully co-operating with the inquiry by the Senate budget committee but that Barofsky’s report contained “numerous factual errors, misleading and gratuitous statements and unsupported allegations that are based on an incomplete understanding of the facts”.

https://www.ft.com/content/32640237-3c0b-4c87-ba5c-75ac914c6866?shareType=nongift