Credit Suisse hid Nazi bank accounts under American blacklist file to evade investigators: report

Swiss bankers sought to cover up the extent to which they helped the Nazis store looted assets during World War II by placing their account information under a secret file with the stamp “American blacklist,” according to a report.Investigators digging into archives at failed lender Credit Suisse found several Nazi-linked bank accounts that were never disclosed during 1990s-era probes that led to a $1 billion restitution agreement with survivors of the Holocaust, according to The Wall Street Journal.Researchers digging into records also found evidence of an account that was controlled by senior Nazi SS officers and a Swiss intermediary that was believed to have been used to move and store looted assets, the Journal reported.Credit Suisse maintained bank accounts that were controlled by known Nazis — the details of which were meant to be concealed from investigators as they were stamped with the term “American blacklist,” according to the Journal.Some of those accounts were used by business entities that seized Jewish-owned assets and relied on forced labor at concentration camps, investigators learned.The latest investigation was conducted by former federal prosecutor Neil Barofsky, who is currently a partner at Manhattan-based law firm Jenner & Block LLP.In 2021, Credit Suisse hired Barofsky to conduct an independent investigation after the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization, flagged evidence of possible Nazi-linked accounts that were not disclosed.During the course of his investigation, Barofsky accused Credit Suisse bankers of failing to adequately cooperate.After Credit Suisse fired Barofsky a year into his work, he authored a report which alleged that senior Nazi commanders who fled to Argentina after the war maintained accounts with the bank as recently as 2002.In late 2023, Barofsky was reinstated by UBS after the bank acquired Credit Suisse in an emergency rescue.After Barofsky was removed from the probe, the Senate Bud...