Trump admin urged to probe UBS for its Nazi-linked – Business News
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is being urged to examine Swiss bank UBS for “obstructing” congressional efforts to uncover its “deep” ties to the Nazi regime by means of accounts that looted Jewish property and helped SS officers flee to Argentina following the Second World War.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) penned a letter final Tuesday to a State Department official tasked with combating anti-semitism, calling the bank’s conduct “a historic shame” and requesting help in furthering his own investigation of UBS’s alleged obstruction.
“As my investigation proceeds, it would be helpful to know about the further steps your office plans to take to help make the Jewish people whole from the theft and looting of their finances and art by the Nazis,” the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman instructed Ambassador Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun.
The now-defunct bank Credit Suisse was acquired by UBS in 2023. Bloomberg through Getty Images
Grassley’s May 19 missive copied Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and outgoing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell as properly.
UBS was in a position to acquire last approval in March for a national constitution from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency during probes into its Nazi-linked accounts — however sources instructed The Post that Treasury Department 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 national bank constitution imposes a “heightened responsibility” and its “current conduct is a historic shame, especially in light of its once cooperative attitude” towards his investigation.
“Since April of 2023, I have led a bipartisan investigation into the unresolved issue of Swiss banks, specifically Credit Suisse, which has since been purchased by UBS, and undisclosed Nazi-linked accounts, the theft of money, gold, the looting of art and related issues,” Grassley instructed Kaploun.
“On these and related issues, the investigations of the 1990s didn’t bring full justice to the Jewish people and the victims of the Holocaust,” he instructed the particular envoy to monitor and fight anti-semitism.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote a letter final Tuesday to a State Department official tasked with combating anti-semitism, calling the Swiss bank’s conduct “a historic shame.” Getty Images
“UBS, should its conduct remain unchanged, will apparently be able to make money off the backs of the U.S. taxpayers while thumbing its nose at the U.S. Congress, the American people, victims of the Holocaust, and history itself,” Grassley’s letter famous.
In 1999, Credit Suisse reached a $1.25 billion settlement with Holocaust survivors and their households over the pressured switch of Jewish property to Nazi-affiliated accounts.
But subsequent studies and investigations have indicated that not all of the banks’ ties to Adolf Hitler’s regime have been uncovered.
The impartial 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. ASSOCIATED PRESS
In 2020, the Simon Wiesenthal Center discovered as many as 12,000 Nazis who had escaped to Argentina have been linked to accounts at a Credit Suisse predecessor.
An impartial investigator was then tasked by the bank the next yr with wanting into Nazi-linked accounts. In 2023, with that investigation nonetheless ongoing, UBS acquired Credit Suisse for $3 billion.
The impartial 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.
File phote from 1933, reveals German chief Adolf Hitler & Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels receiving the cheers and Nazi salutes of their followers in Berlin. Bettmann Archive
But 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.
“To date, UBS has not provided my team with a privilege log identifying the bases for these
redactions and withholdings, nor has it committed to a date by which such a log will be produced,” Barofsky wrote within the May 20 letter.
The ombudsman additionally claimed UBS had “made false and misleading statements” about 127 accounts beforehand recognized by Barofsky and his crew of investigators as having held Jewish property that have been forcibly transferred from Credit Suisse to Nazi-affiliated German bank purchasers.
“I now know that the Bank had identified, collected, and reviewed these cards months earlier,” Barofsky wrote to Grassley, citing 113 accounts later flagged by UBS to his crew.
Barofsky has additionally claimed previously that his investigative crew was allegedly blocked from pursuing “credible leads” into the Swiss bank’s hyperlinks to the SS and the “ratlines” that helped the Nazis flee to Latin America after World War II.
In a February public listening to, Barofksy mentioned he was fired between 2022 and 2023 during his probe for refusing to “suppress the truth” in regards to the Nazi ties to UBS’s predecessor banks.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, an affiliate dean on the Simon Wiesenthal Center, mentioned in the identical listening to of previous probes into Swiss banks: “What was largely left untouched were Nazi-linked accounts, shell corporations and financial networks that helped Nazis safeguard their criminal proceeds and escape justice.”
UBS reaffirmed its authority to withhold privileged data in written testimony submitted on May 21, saying that its “once excellent relationship” with Barofsky had deteriorated due to the bank’s “desire to bring its six-year investigation to an orderly and appropriate close” by the top of this calendar yr.
The Swiss bank additional famous that it had supplied the ombudsman with entry to roughly 16.5 million pages of paperwork, withholding “less than 0.1%” of its complete data to shield attorney-client privilege associated to the class-action settlement settlement with Holocaust victims within the Nineteen Nineties.
“Notably, we are not withholding documents from prior to the 1990s, even if they were included in the 1990s class action litigation files,” UBS additionally mentioned in a assertion. “For example, if World War II-era documents are attached to a privileged document, we are not withholding those historical documents.”
UBS, which admitted to spending more than $250 million on a voluntary review of previous Nazi accounts since 2021, additionally cited potential “threats of litigation” from the Simon Wiesenthal Center that would reopen the 1999 settlement as its cause for withholding privileged paperwork.
Reps for the Treasury and State Departments didn’t reply to requests for remark.
