New trouble for Credit Suisse (CS). The “Bild”, the largest daily newspaper in Europe, speaks of one “hot track to Switzerland”. Papers discovered in an Argentinian warehouse are said to lead to secret Nazi billions. A billion treasure has been lying in a secret CS account for 78 years.
Nazi descendants, top international lawyers and the Jewish Simon Wiesenthal Center together hunt for the alleged Nazi treasure that has been lost since the Second World War.
Randomly discovered list
The hunt began with a list found by a certain Pedro Filipuzzi in 1984 while cleaning up a storage room at the Banca National de Desarollo in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires. “500 yellowed pages, on it: 12,000 German names, in alphabetical order, dates of birth and ominous numbers,” writes the “Bild”.
There are also entries from German companies that had agencies in Argentina in the 1930s and 1940s: Rheinmetall, Leipziger Messeamt, Thyssen and many smaller companies. Behind notes with the amount of money deposits.
This list is said to be the key to billions of dollars. German Hitler supporters had long supported the NSDAP from Argentina. They deposited the funds into an account at Banco Transatlantico Aleman, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank.
Codename «German Winter Aid»
“Officially, the money was used for the ‘German Winter Aid’,” according to the “Bild”. Bank President Ludwig Freude, a German-Argentinian entrepreneur and ardent National Socialist, is said to have personally managed the secret fortune.
Not all the money went to the Hitler party: the list is intended to show that a large part of the money went to an account with the then Schweizerische Kreditanstalt (SKA), from which CS emerged in 1997.
Finder Filipuzzi only noticed years later how explosive the list found is. He investigated on his own, turned to the descendants of bank boss Freude and CS. “But Credit Suisse walled up,” writes the “Bild”. In 2019, Filipuzzi gave the documents to the Jewish Simon Wiesenthal Center. “We believe that there is money in the account that was stolen from the victims of National Socialism,” said a spokesman.
Credit Suisse: “So far we have not found an account”
So far, the Wiesenthal lawyers have not been granted any insight into banking transactions. In order to obtain the desired information, the bank said in writing that one should “contact international courts”.
Lawyers from Buenos Aires, Washington, Berlin and Zurich are now involved. A lawyer familiar with the files speaks of an extremely difficult search for clues: “If the account was created under the name of a company and not under the name Ludwig Freude, then it is almost impossible to identify the account.”
As the “image” wants to know, the CS is already investigating itself. “Up to 40 employees – historians, lawyers, financial experts – are supposed to be looking for a possibly camouflaged secret account in their own house.” A spokesman for the newspaper: “So far we have not found an account.” (kes)