WASHINGTON — A lawyer hired by now-defunct Credit Suisse to investigate its financial ties to the Nazi regime told senators Tuesday that he was sidelined by Swiss bankers who wanted “to suppress the truth” about the Third Reich “profiting off of the Holocaust.”
Neil Barofsky, who is serving as ombudsman of an internal probe into the reported billions of dollars held in Nazi-linked accounts at the bank, made the claims in explosive testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Preliminary findings from that probe shared with the committee cited at least 890 accounts potentially affiliated with Nazis, including “628 individuals and 262 legal entities,” according to Barofsky’s written testimony.
“In 2022, I was fired by Credit Suisse when I refused to go along with its efforts to suppress the truth,” Neil Barofsky told lawmakers, thanking Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) for helping him be reinstated.
“In my testimony today, we talk about some of the previously unreported ties between Credit Suisse and some of the instrumentalities of the Nazi government,” Barofsky said.
“This includes accounts for something called the German Foreign Office,” he explained. “When Hitler would invade a country, the German Foreign Office would get involved to help round up the Jews … herd them into ghettos, provincial transportation, into the concentration and extermination camps.
“Credit Suisse had four accounts with the German Foreign Office, and these were administered at the highest levels of the Nazi government, with Adolf Hitler’s own personal secret Cabinet, [the] council of advisers, dispatching the account manager in 1940 to go to Zurich to meet with officials at Credit Suisse to discuss the fund management of these accounts in the interest of the Third Reich.”
“My testimony also corrects an historical error,” Barofsky went on. “Back in the 1990s, a Swiss German journalist found in some German archives documents that indicated a relationship between Credit Suisse and the SS … whose responsibilities included the administration of the concentration camps.”
This was all “part of the Nazi enterprise of profiting off of the Holocaust,” he noted.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said the cash grab could have topped $550 billion, with billions in stolen assets belonging to the Jewish people allowed “to simply disappear.”
Barofsky added: “This meant monetizing everything from the slave labor of concentration camp prisoners, the theft of their assets and personal belongings when they got to the camps, and even monetizing murder, selling the hair that was shaved off of Jewish women and children as they were marched into the chambers.”
Follow The Post’s live coverage of President Trump and national politics for the latest news and analysis
“But Credit Suisse denied the existence of this account and said that there was no records in its archives,” he said. “This investigation has proven that to be untrue.”
Credit Suisse fired the chief investigator in 2022 — but he was reinstated in December 2023 by UBS, which acquired its onetime rival as part of a more than $3 billion emergency takeover earlier that year.
That forced UBS to take on a related legal case, which was discussed during the hearing, involving Holocaust victims who reached a more than $1 billion settlement with Credit Suisse in the mid-1990s.
Barofsky’s uncovering of additional Nazi account holders has complicated that settlement, along with a 2020 report put out by the Jewish global human rights group the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Both the report and Barofsky’s initial findings have indicated hundreds and potentially thousands more Nazis banked at Credit Suisse’s predecessor, with some using “ratlines” set up by individuals connected with the bank to flee to Argentina after Germany’s defeat in 1945.
Since his return to the role of ombudsman, Barofsky has sought to obtain tens of thousands more pages of records that could paint a fuller picture of Credit Suisse’s activities — an undertaking he likens to finding “needles in one of the most enormous haystacks you can imagine.”
“Picture the final scene in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’” he told senators in the hearing. “That’s what the Credit Suisse archives are like.”
The wrangle for the remaining records also has implications for a related legal battle between UBS and the Simon Wiesenthal Center concerning the Credit Suisse settlement.
The Swiss bank’s executives have testified that handing over the documents could run afoul of their attorney-client privilege obligations.
“We have not turned over the documents because of the threat of litigation,” President of UBS Americas Robert Karofsky said in the hearing.
Grassley accused UBS of trying to silence Rabbi Abraham Cooper, an associate dean at the center and one of the witnesses at the hearing, through a proposed order in Brooklyn federal court last month.
UBS General Counsel Barabara Levi indicated that Barofsky would have access to the final documents if the judge approved the order.
Karofsky noted in the hearing that the 1999 settlement already dealt with that as the payments were “for known and unknown claims — and the larger portion is for unknown claims.”
“That’s what this is all about. You don’t want to pay any more money, do you?” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) confronted Karofsky after the UBS executive made the statement.
“I don’t agree with that, senator,” Karofsky replied, noting earlier that “UBS and Credit Suisse’s conduct, behavior, during World War II was terrible and shameful.”
Karofsky also said Barofsky had done a “tremendous” job and “we’ve been fully cooperative.”
Cooper said the proposed order “threatens the very existence of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s pursuit of our mission to bring truth to light.”
“Previous efforts to investigate Swiss banks’ role were significant, but they were incomplete,” he told Judiciary panel members. “What was largely left untouched were Nazi-linked accounts, shell corporations and financial networks that helped Nazis safeguard their criminal proceeds and escape justice.”
Senators on both sides of the aisle pressed UBS to reach an amicable resolution with SWC, with some suggesting that the $1.25 billion settlement agreement should be reopened.
Grassley denounced “UBS’ conduct” as “absurd and a historic shame that will outlive today’s hearing.”
The Iowa Republican also accused UBS of sabotaging “its own efforts to show accountability” through the court maneuver and urged its executives “to make peace before it’s too late to repair the damage the bank has done.”
Senate Judiciary aides have said Barofsky is expected to conclude his investigation and release a final report by the end of this year.
