The Nazi Ties to Credit Suisse

Summary

Summary of "The Nazi Ties to Credit Suisse" Episode from The Journal

The Journal, a co-production of The Wall Street Journal and Gimlet, delves into significant stories surrounding money, business, and power. In the episode titled "The Nazi Ties to Credit Suisse," released on January 15, 2025, hosts Kate Linebaugh and Ryan Knutson, along with correspondent Margo Patrick, explore the deep-seated connections between Credit Suisse and Nazi-affiliated entities during World War II. This summary encapsulates the key discussions, insights, and conclusions drawn throughout the episode.

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1. Historical Settlement and Initial Closure

The episode begins with Kate Linebaugh recounting a pivotal moment in 1998 when Swiss banks UBS and Credit Suisse reached a settlement concerning their historical ties to Nazis. This agreement was intended to bring both moral and material justice to Holocaust survivors and their descendants.

Kate Linebaugh [00:05]: “That we've reached an historic agreement with the Swiss banks that will bring moral and material justice to those who have suffered for so long and bring closure on these issues.”

Margo Patrick adds context, noting that the settlement was widely endorsed by Jewish organizations, signaling an end to decades-long battles for accountability.

Margo Patrick [00:47]: “There was a feeling that this is it, a line has been drawn, we're going to move past this.”

However, not everyone was satisfied, setting the stage for future investigations.

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2. Resurgence of Investigations and New Revelations

Contrary to expectations, the settlement did not mark the end of scrutiny. In early 2025, a new investigation into Credit Suisse uncovered alarming details about the bank's Nazi associations.

Kate Linebaugh [01:16]: “That settlement didn't turn out to be the end. Last month, a new probe into Credit Suisse surfaced some shocking revelations about the bank's ties to Nazis.”

Margo Patrick explains the extent of these revelations, including the involvement of a Swiss lawyer who facilitated Nazi transactions and connections with German manufacturers utilizing slave labor.

Margo Patrick [01:30]: “There was a Swiss lawyer who was known for cloaking Nazi transactions. And... entities run by the SS that were opening accounts during the war.”

These findings have cast doubt on the bank's transparency and raised questions about the completeness of previous settlements.

Kate Linebaugh [01:53]: “These new findings are raising doubts about the bank's transparency.”

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3. The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Ongoing Efforts

Post-settlement, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, dedicated to Holocaust education and Nazi hunting, continued to probe Credit Suisse's activities. Their efforts were hindered by Switzerland's stringent banking secrecy laws, making it challenging to access detailed account information.

Kate Linebaugh [04:03]: “...Switzerland's particularly strict laws which protect the identities of bank account holders.”

Margo Patrick details the Center’s focus on Nazi-linked accounts and entities, revealing a labyrinth of hidden relationships and financial maneuvers.

Margo Patrick [04:16]: “They had these sort of new leads on Nazi linked accounts that they studied themselves for some time.”

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4. Neil Barofsky’s Investigation and Firing

In 2021, Credit Suisse appointed Neil Barofsky, a former U.S. federal prosecutor, to lead an internal investigation. Barofsky's work unearthed substantial new evidence, including undocumented Nazi-linked accounts and internal acknowledgments from the bank about these connections.

Kate Linebaugh [05:45]: “In 2021, Credit Suisse hired a former US federal prosecutor to head up an in house investigation... Neil Barofsky.”

However, as Barofsky delved deeper, uncovering more intricate ties and questioning the completeness of past disclosures, he faced opposition from within the bank’s executive ranks. This culminated in his termination.

Margo Patrick [07:19]: “...he was finding so much that some executives within the bank were concerned...”

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5. Public Disclosure and Senate Involvement

Despite his firing, Barofsky persisted in his efforts. His comprehensive 205-page report became public in early 2023 after being subpoenaed by the U.S. Senate Budget Committee. This report exposed nearly 100 previously undisclosed Nazi-linked accounts, some active as recently as 2020.

Margo Patrick [08:56]: “...the investigation uncovered nearly 100 previously undisclosed Nazi linked accounts.”

Simultaneously, Credit Suisse released its own, notably shorter, report, which minimally acknowledged the findings, suggesting consistency with previously known information.

Kate Linebaugh [09:38]: “Credit Suisse report was much shorter and the Credit Suisse position was essentially okay...”

The situation intensified when Credit Suisse was acquired by UBS in March 2023. UBS reinstated Barofsky, providing him with extensive resources to continue his investigation, leading to the discovery of critical documents stamped with the “American Blacklist.”

Margo Patrick [10:56]: “There were numerous client files... stamped with this. It was American Blacklist.”

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6. Implications of the American Blacklist Findings

The American Blacklist designation indicates entities that the U.S. government and its allies identified as problematic during WWII, either due to financing Nazis or other collaborative activities. The revelation that Credit Suisse had previously encountered these entities but failed to disclose them raises significant concerns about the bank’s historical accountability.

Kate Linebaugh [11:13]: “The American Blacklist... a designation that seems really important to look into.”

Barofsky's ongoing investigation aims to understand the full extent of Credit Suisse's involvement and the fate of assets linked to these accounts.

Margo Patrick [11:49]: “The work that's going on right now is to understand the significance...”

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7. Lessons and Future Implications for Swiss Banking

Margo Patrick reflects on the broader lessons from this investigation, emphasizing the importance of transparency and accountability.

Margo Patrick [13:52]: “If there are secrets to hide, sometimes it's better just to come clean.”

The episode concludes by highlighting the potential ramifications for Swiss banking. Switzerland's reputation as a haven for both legitimate and illicit funds faces scrutiny, suggesting that historical misdeeds can resurface, impacting banks' reputations and operations long after the fact.

Margo Patrick [14:15]: “...this could be a wake up call for Swiss banks, that the past cannot be fully left behind.”

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Conclusion

"The Nazi Ties to Credit Suisse" episode of The Journal offers a comprehensive examination of the enduring legacy of historical financial misconduct and its implications for contemporary banking institutions. Through meticulous reporting and insightful analysis, the hosts and correspondents underscore the necessity for ongoing transparency and accountability, ensuring that past injustices are neither forgotten nor repeated.

Transcript

[Kate Limbaugh]

In 1998, two Swiss banks, UBS and Credit Suisse, came to an agreement to settle claims that had their roots in World War II and the bank's historic ties to Nazis. That we've reached an historic agreement with the Swiss banks that will bring moral and material justice to those who have suffered for so long and bring closure on these issues. The banks agreed to pay over $1 billion to descendants of Jewish account holders. It seemed like this was the end of a decades long fight for accountability. Here's our colleague Margo Patrick, who covers Swiss banking.

[Margo Patrick]

So at that point in time, I think a lot of the parties involved felt like this is it, a line has been drawn, we're going to move past this. And certainly that was how the Swiss banks felt. And that agreement in 1998 was also endorsed by more than a dozen Jewish organizations. So it everyone who had been sort of around the table on this had agreed, okay, let's do the settlement and this will kind of put an end to it once and for all. But of course, of course, not everyone felt that way.

[Kate Limbaugh]

That settlement didn't turn out to be the end. Last month, a new probe into Credit Suisse surfaced some shocking revelations about the bank's ties to Nazis.

[Margo Patrick]

There was a Swiss lawyer who was known for cloaking Nazi transactions. And that person had several accounts at Credit Suisse. There was a relationship with a German manufacturer that used slave labor from concentration camps. And that manufacturer opened an account at Credit Suisse during the war. There were entities run by the SS that were opening accounts during the war.

[Kate Limbaugh]

These new findings are raising doubts about the bank's transparency.

[Margo Patrick]

And so there's this feeling that this period of time hasn't been fully studied, that it hasn't. There hasn't been a full sense of accountability. And so I think people want to get more transparency. There's still a sense amongst many families, many Jewish organizations, many of people who otherwise suffered at the hands of the Nazis, that there wasn't a full reckoning of some of the activities in World War II. And that the Swiss banks perhaps were more complicit than people had thought.

[Kate Limbaugh]

Welcome to the Journal. Our show about money, business and power. I'm Kate LIMBAUGH. It's Wednesday, January 15th. Coming up on the show, the relationship between Credit Suisse and the Nazis.

[Margo Patrick]

Foreign.

[Chuck Grassley]

This episode is brought to you by Mint Mobile. If saving is your goal for 2025, switch to mint Mobile. They let you maximize your savings with plans that start at $15 a month. When you buy a three month plan to get this new customer offer, go to mintmobile.comjournal tap the banner to learn more. $45 upfront payment required equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first 3 month plan only. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees and rest Cement mobile. For details.

[Kate Limbaugh]

After the big settlement in the 90s, some organizations kept investigating the Swiss banks. One was the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

[Margo Patrick]

Simon Wiesenthal was a Nazi hunter. He was a survivor of the Holocaust. And so the Simon Wiesenthal center, their mission is really to teach the world about the Holocaust.

[Kate Limbaugh]

But finding out more about the ties between Credit Suisse and the Nazis was hard, in part because of Switzerland's particularly strict laws which protect the identities of bank account holders.

[Margo Patrick]

The Simon Wiesenthal center was looking at bank accounts that were attached to Nazis and Nazi entities, Nazi affiliates, so say, like a holding company that was furthering the Nazi aims for industry that would maybe own a bunch of companies. And some of those companies might have come from Jewish owners that they'd been taken over. So they had these sort of new leads on Nazi linked accounts that they studied themselves for some time. And so they shared that with the bank in 2020. And Credit Suisse Schewartz Credit said, yeah, we want to look into this, but.

[Kate Limbaugh]

But looking into something so old was a monumental task. A lot of records had been destroyed and much of what was left was handwritten and sitting in rows and rows of boxes in warehouses.

[Margo Patrick]

So the task here is to delve into archives of often written records in ledgers or maybe some of it might have at some point been put onto microfilm or lots of like, you know, almost obsolete media. So there'd just be, you know, sort of rooms and rooms of customer documents and old bank records often handwritten. And those all had to be really sort of sifted through. And it's a huge task to really look at everything.

[Kate Limbaugh]

In 2021, Credit Suisse hired a former US federal prosecutor to head up an in house investigation. His name was Neil Barofsky. And Barofsky started finding a lot of new leads.

[Margo Patrick]

And so this investigation was producing a lot of information because the last time anyone had really looked was in the 1990s. And the technology is a lot better now to process information. And so a lot of leads were coming up.

[Kate Limbaugh]

So what does Barofsky find?

[Margo Patrick]

What he started to find was that many of these leads were strong that the Simon Wiesenthal center had given to the bank that there were some new Nazi clients that hadn't really been found before. So he's finding a lot and he's finding that the more he looks, the more he finds. And something else he started to find was internal information at the bank about those 1990s investigations.

[Kate Limbaugh]

What kind of information?

[Margo Patrick]

There was information in those sort of working papers from the 1990s that indicated the bank did know about certain clients, that the bank was aware of certain connections with Nazi affiliates or Nazi related companies that hadn't been disclosed before. And so he was pursuing that investigation and then he got fired from the job by the bank.

[Kate Limbaugh]

Why did Credit Suisse fire him?

[Margo Patrick]

So Credit Suisse fired Neil Brofski. Some of the executives who were at the bank at the time felt like he was kind of overstepping the bounds of what he was there to investigate. So whilst the Simon Weisenthal center had given them lists of names, in fact, he was finding even more. He was finding indications about their disclosures in the 90s. And so it was becoming a bit open ended. He was finding so much that some executives within the bank were concerned that this is going to take forever and cost a ton of money and what's going to come out of it.

[Kate Limbaugh]

Barofsky may have been fired, but he didn't stop working. That's after the break. Even though Credit Suisse had fired Neil Barofsky, Barofsky didn't stop working.

[Margo Patrick]

His position was that he had a job to do. He had been asked to investigate and to write a report. And so he wrote a report.

[Kate Limbaugh]

After he finished his report, Barofsky handed it to Credit Suisse and that would have been it, except a U.S. senate committee heard about the report and subpoenaed a copy. In early 2023, the US Senate Budget Committee made Barofsky's report public. Here's Senator Chuck Grassley sharing some details on the Senate floor.

[Margo Patrick]

The reports revealed new information, including nearly 100 and let me emphasize, 100 previously undisclosed Nazi linked accounts. Some accounts remained open as recently as the year 2020. So this is where things started to kind of get out of the bank's hands because the bank had, you know, essentially been trying to silence these findings in this report.

[Kate Limbaugh]

At the same time, Credit Suisse had been continuing its investigation without Barofsky and it produced a report of its own.

[Margo Patrick]

And the reports were pretty different because the Neil borowski Report was 205 pages. It had a lot of information about what he'd found. Credit Suisse report was much shorter and the Credit Suisse position was essentially okay. He did find some things but this doesn't really move on the historical record. It's pretty much what we knew already.

[Kate Limbaugh]

At the Same time, in March 2023, Credit Suisse collapsed and was taken over by rival Swiss bank ubs. Months later, UBS decided to rehire Borowski so he could finish his work.

[Margo Patrick]

And he gets dug in again with a team. UBS devoted resources to it. So there was something like 50 or more people working on this. And. And Neil Broski was also able to hire his own forensic accountants and his own historians and so forth to really sort of look at their work that was being done. So at this point, he had, you know, sort of fresh support for his efforts. And he also had the Senate Budget Committee behind him saying, please leave no stone unturned.

[Kate Limbaugh]

Now, with a bigger remit and more resources, Barofsky turned up a lot of new information.

[Margo Patrick]

And so he found something like there were, you know, thousands of boxes full of files. And in those files, there were numerous client files that were stamped with this. It was a stamp that Broski and his team hadn't seen before, and it was American Blacklist.

[Kate Limbaugh]

The American Blacklist. This was a list kept during World War II of people who the U.S. government and its allies wouldn't do business with.

[Margo Patrick]

So this was a designation given to Nazi entities or other Axis powers during the war that the US and its allies were aware of or suspected were financing or trading with the Nazis. And so this is a designation that seems really important to look into.

[Kate Limbaugh]

Those files could have been revealed during that earlier investigation in the 90s, but they weren't.

[Margo Patrick]

So they haven't investigated or they haven't fully probed all of these files. That's the work that's going on right now is to understand the significance of the people that had that blacklist that were on the blacklist, had that stamp on their files to really understand what they were doing and how that might fit in with the investigation.

[Kate Limbaugh]

Last month, Borowski released some of his newest findings.

[Margo Patrick]

So Barofsky told senators that the investigation uncovered scores of individuals and entities who were linked to Nazi atrocities, and that these either hadn't been identified before or the full nature of Credit Suisse's involvement hadn't ever been reported publicly. The investigators also find accounts for several hundred alleged Nazi intermediaries, such as lawyers. And these are people who had helped the Nazis hide gold or loot Jewish assets, or just generally support the war economy under the Nazis. But these are the new leads that Borowski and the investigators are pursuing. Now. Barofsky also found information that the bank hadn't disclosed before about a specific account that other researchers had identified years ago, back in the 1990s. So this was an account controlled by two SS officers and a Swiss intermediary. And so Credit suisse in the 1990s had told one of the commissions looking at this issue that it couldn't find any information about this account. But Barofsky found that the bank did know about the account. It had documentation in its files in those 1990s reviews. So this account is important because this Swiss intermediary could have kept sending cash to the Nazis after the war ended, since it was in the name of a Swiss person. And that's the kind of question that Barofsky is looking at now, like, whether that happened or not and what happened with some of these assets and with some of this money.

[Kate Limbaugh]

What do you think the banks are taking away from all of this information, historic information coming out?

[Margo Patrick]

I think one lesson is that if there are secrets to hide, sometimes it's better just to come clean. At the moment of cleansing, which was supposed to be in the 90s, that was supposed to be the moment for the banks to really come clean.

[Kate Limbaugh]

How could this sort of affect Swiss banking more generally?

[Margo Patrick]

You know, Switzerland has been a haven for money, and that includes dirty money. And so when a government is deposed or a dictator flees, then often the first place people look is, you know, well, where's the money? Is it? Where is it? And often a portion of it is in Switzerland. So there's a sense that this could be a wake up call for Swiss banks, that the past cannot be fully left behind, that the past can come back many years later and harm your reputation again.

[Kate Limbaugh]

That's all for today. Wednesday, January 15th. The Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.