WASHINGTON — UBS has been accused of withholding tens of hundreds of data about former subsidiary Credit score Suisse’s stunning Nazi ties — together with involving the pressured switch of property owned by murdered Jews.
Round 23,000 paperwork are nonetheless being “redacted or withheld” from a lawyer conducting an impartial investigation into the Nazi-linked accounts on the now-defunct Credit score Suisse, in response to new testimony submitted to Congress on Monday.
The ombudsman, Neil Barofsky, stated in supplemental written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he additionally has but to see one other 1 million pages beneath assessment by UBS attorneys for probably privileged data.
The delay of the probe is complicating a associated $1.25 billion settlement with Holocaust victims.
Barofsky, together with forensic analysis agency AlixPartners, has allegedly been blocked from probing 127 cases of potential “looting of Jewish property” by “Nazi-affiliated German financial institution shoppers.”
He and the analysis firm even have allegedly been prevented from pursuing “credible leads” into the Swiss financial institution’s hyperlinks to the SS and the “ratlines” that helped the Nazis flee to Latin America after World Struggle II.
“I’m involved UBS’s latest heavy-handed strategy to this investigation could forestall vital historic information from coming to mild,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) stated in an announcement Monday.
“These new particulars name into query UBS’s candor to the committee and its dedication to an intensive investigation.”
At a Feb. 3 Senate listening to, UBS executives publicly testified that “fewer than 150 paperwork” out of 16.5 million have but to be handed over to the ombudsman and said the identical in a associated federal courtroom listening to the next month.
However the financial institution privately acknowledged to holding onto hundreds extra paperwork in emails to Barofsky’s crew.
Barofsky testified that some paperwork marked as a single doc are in truth bigger productions containing “over 1,000 pages every.”
Grassley fired off letters to UBS common counsel Barbara Levi and President UBS Americas Robert Karofsky citing “quite a few unanswered questions” as part of his committee’s inquiry and demanding a response to the ombudsman’s follow-up written testimony by April 24.
Barofsky, who was fired after which rehired beneath strain from Congress as an impartial monitor to supervise Credit score Suisse’s assessment of its Nazi-linked accounts, revealed findings from his inner probe in February that confirmed 890 accounts with potential ties to dictator Adolf Hitler’s battle efforts.
UBS acquired rival financial institution Credit score Suisse as a part of a greater than $3 billion emergency takeover in March 2023, forcing it to tackle phrases of a settlement reached between the latter financial institution and Holocaust victims within the Nineties.
The Simon Wiesenthal Heart in a 2020 report first disclosed as many as 12,000 Nazis who fled to Argentina had been linked to accounts at a Credit score Suisse predecessor — and its affiliate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, additionally testified earlier than the Senate Judiciary panel in February.
“Earlier efforts to analyze Swiss banks’ position had been vital, however they had been incomplete,” Cooper informed the judiciary panel members.
“What was largely left untouched had been Nazi-linked accounts, shell firms and monetary networks that helped Nazis safeguard their prison proceeds and escape justice.”
Barofsky is anticipated to conclude his probe by the top of this yr however famous in his testimony filed Monday with the committee that UBS set a “self-imposed deadline” of July 31, 2026, for all of its doc productions, complicating his efforts.
UBS reps have beforehand referred to paperwork not disclosed to Barofsky as “a restricted set of information and communications protected by attorney-client privilege, which relate to the Nineties Holocaust class-action litigation and the 1999 Settlement Settlement.”
“The financial institution’s historic voluntary assessment focuses on the World Struggle II-era actions, not the litigation that resulted within the 1999 Settlement Settlement,” the reps have stated.
A UBS rep informed The Publish in an announcement Monday, “UBS has proven unwavering dedication to this historic assessment, underpinned by substantial monetary sources and steady engagement.
“The financial institution has been and can proceed to be clear with the Committee and shares its goal to make clear the historic document by delivering a remaining report by yr finish.”
