WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is being urged to analyze Swiss financial institution UBS for “obstructing” congressional efforts to uncover its “deep” ties to the Nazi regime by way of accounts that looted Jewish belongings and helped SS officers flee to Argentina following the Second World Warfare.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) penned a letter final Tuesday to a State Division official tasked with combating anti-semitism, calling the financial institution’s conduct “a historic disgrace” and requesting help in furthering his personal investigation of UBS’s alleged obstruction.
“As my investigation proceeds, it could be useful to know concerning the additional steps your workplace plans to take to assist make the Jewish individuals entire from the theft and looting of their funds and artwork by the Nazis,” the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman advised Ambassador Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun.
Grassley’s Could 19 missive copied Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and outgoing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell as nicely.
UBS was in a position to acquire remaining approval in March for a nationwide constitution from the US Workplace of the Comptroller of the Forex throughout probes into its Nazi-linked accounts — however sources advised The Publish that Treasury Division officers have since been briefed on UBS’s failure to have interaction in Grassley’s bipartisan inquiry.
The Iowa Republican famous in his letter that UBS’s nationwide financial institution constitution imposes a “heightened duty” and its “present conduct is a historic disgrace, particularly in gentle of its as soon as cooperative perspective” towards his investigation.
“Since April of 2023, I’ve led a bipartisan investigation into the unresolved difficulty of Swiss banks, particularly Credit score Suisse, which has since been bought by UBS, and undisclosed Nazi-linked accounts, the theft of cash, gold, the looting of artwork and associated points,” Grassley advised Kaploun.
“On these and associated points, the investigations of the Nineteen Nineties didn’t deliver full justice to the Jewish individuals and the victims of the Holocaust,” he advised the particular envoy to watch and fight anti-semitism.
“UBS, ought to its conduct stay unchanged, will apparently be capable to generate income off the backs of the U.S. taxpayers whereas thumbing its nostril on the U.S. Congress, the American individuals, victims of the Holocaust, and historical past itself,” Grassley’s letter famous.
In 1999, Credit score Suisse reached a $1.25 billion settlement with Holocaust survivors and their households over the compelled switch of Jewish belongings to Nazi-affiliated accounts.
However subsequent studies and investigations have indicated that not all the banks’ ties to Adolf Hitler’s regime have been uncovered.
In 2020, the Simon Wiesenthal Middle discovered as many as 12,000 Nazis who had escaped to Argentina have been linked to accounts at a Credit score Suisse predecessor.
An unbiased investigator was then tasked by the financial institution the next 12 months with trying into Nazi-linked accounts. In 2023, with that investigation nonetheless ongoing, UBS acquired Credit score Suisse for $3 billion.
The unbiased monitor, Neil Barofsky, revealed some findings from the probe in February that confirmed 890 accounts with potential ties to dictator Adolf Hitler’s battle efforts.
However in April, he revealed to a Senate committee in written testimony that roughly 23,000 pages of paperwork about Third Reich funds are nonetheless being “redacted or withheld” by UBS amid his investigation. In a subsequent letter to Grassley, the ombudsman cited as many as 27,400 lacking pages.
“Up to now, UBS has not offered my staff with a privilege log figuring out the bases for these
redactions and withholdings, nor has it dedicated to a date by which such a log shall be produced,” Barofsky wrote within the Could 20 letter.
The ombudsman additionally claimed UBS had “made false and deceptive statements” about 127 accounts beforehand recognized by Barofsky and his staff of investigators as having held Jewish belongings that have been forcibly transferred from Credit score Suisse to Nazi-affiliated German financial institution shoppers.
“I now know that the Financial institution had recognized, collected, and reviewed these playing cards months earlier,” Barofsky wrote to Grassley, citing 113 accounts later flagged by UBS to his staff.
Barofsky has additionally claimed previously that his investigative staff was allegedly blocked 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 Warfare II.
In a February public listening to, Barofksy mentioned he was fired between 2022 and 2023 throughout his probe for refusing to “suppress the reality” concerning the Nazi ties to UBS’s predecessor banks.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, an affiliate dean on the Simon Wiesenthal Middle, mentioned in the identical listening to of previous probes into Swiss banks: “What was largely left untouched have been Nazi-linked accounts, shell firms and monetary networks that helped Nazis safeguard their legal proceeds and escape justice.”
UBS reaffirmed its authority to withhold privileged data in written testimony submitted on Could 21, saying that its “as soon as glorious relationship” with Barofsky had deteriorated as a result of financial institution’s “need to deliver its six-year investigation to an orderly and applicable shut” by the tip of this calendar 12 months.
The Swiss financial institution additional famous that it had offered the ombudsman with entry to roughly 16.5 million pages of paperwork, withholding “lower than 0.1%” of its complete data to guard attorney-client privilege associated to the class-action settlement settlement with Holocaust victims within the Nineteen Nineties.
“Notably, we’re not withholding paperwork from previous to the Nineteen Nineties, even when they have been included within the Nineteen Nineties class motion litigation recordsdata,” UBS additionally mentioned in a press release. “For instance, if World Warfare II-era paperwork are connected to a privileged doc, we’re not withholding these historic paperwork.”
UBS, which admitted to spending greater than $250 million on a voluntary evaluation of previous Nazi accounts since 2021, additionally cited potential “threats of litigation” from the Simon Wiesenthal Middle that might reopen the 1999 settlement as its purpose for withholding privileged paperwork.
Reps for the Treasury and State Departments didn’t reply to requests for remark.
