Credit Suisse does not see allegations of “Nazi accounts” in Argentina confirmed. Sharp criticism comes from the US Senate.
Credit Suisse has completed a two-year investigation it had commissioned into possible assets in Argentina held by Holocaust victims in accounts at the predecessor bank Schweizerische Kreditanstalt (SKA). The allegations by the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) were not confirmed in this comprehensive investigation, the bank announced on Tuesday evening.
The US Senate Budget Committee immediately criticized the CS investigation. The bank had obstructed the investigation, not comprehensively enough and not analyzed all relevant data from the years between 1933 and 1945 and thereafter. Among other things, data from Bolivia or Nazi heirs were not taken into account. In addition, an important person was inexplicably released in the course of the investigation.
US committee: “Nazi accounts” partly maintained until 2020
The Senate committee cites its own studies, which are incomplete but nevertheless disclose almost 100 Nazi-related accounts. Some of these were still managed by CS until very recently.
Legend:
Headquarters of the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt SKA on Paradeplatz in Zurich around 1950.
Keystone/Photopress-Archiv/STR
Years ago, a list of members of the Unión Alemana de Gremios (UAG), an organization with ties to Nazi Germany, emerged in Argentina. The list included around 12,000 people, apparently also with bank accounts in Switzerland. Argentina was considered a haven for members of the Nazi regime after World War II.
In March 2020, the renowned Jewish Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles asked Credit Suisse to investigate the list and the case. The organization suspected that numerous people on the list also had accounts with the credit institution – with assets from Holocaust victims.
CS: SWC assumptions not confirmed
According to CS, the investigation conducted by AlixPartners has not provided any evidence to support the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s claims that “many” of the UAG members or other Nazis who fled to Argentina had accounts with the SKA from 1933 to 1945. In addition, eight long-closed accounts that could be identified from this period did not contain any assets from Holocaust victims.
AlixPartners also examined a list of 311 high-ranking Nazis that the Simon Wiesenthal Center sent to Switzerland 25 years ago. According to CS, the in-depth analysis of the investigations carried out in the 1990s was essentially confirmed.