61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

were of the opinion that the administrators’ regulations contravened Swiss
ordre public. This reservation, which could be lodged under international
private law, stated that the application of a foreign law and the implementation
of a foreign verdict could be refused «if the country’s sense of justice were
thereby to suffer outrage beyond measure». 61 It must be said, however, that this
reservation was not sharply defined, as the Federal Council’s argumentation
relating to discrimination against Jews in France will show below. In contrast
to some of its individual members, the Association of Zurich Loan Institutions
(Verband Zürcherischer Kreditinstitute) and the Swiss Bankers Association (Schweizerische
Bankiervereinigung, SBVg) refused to urge its members to completely
ignore the instructions of the administrators imposed. Since the banks in the
German Reich and Austria had to defend eminent interests, they were afraid
that the Nazi regime would take retaliatory measures. In order to defend the
interests of former Austrian owners of businesses as best they could, the Swiss
Bankers Association obliged its members to follow the administrators’ instructions
concerning the assets of individual firms, limited companies and limited
partnerships only if the owner or a single authorised signatory of the firm was
in agreement. The provisional administrator could access the assets of a limited
company only if he could prove, through an extract from the commercial
register, that he was authorised to act on behalf of that company. In case of
dispute the bank was to block the customer’s account and apply to the court.
Since Swiss courts defended the original owners, the Third Reich’s Ministry of
Economic Affairs (Reichswirtschaftsministerium) complained at the beginning of
1939 that the Swiss banks, together with American and English financial institutions,
had adopted a negative attitude towards the demands of the provisional
administrators concerning cashing in assets outside Germany. 62
The Swiss Clearing Office (Schweizerische Verrechnungsstelle, SVSt) played the
principal role as regards Swiss trade debts, especially as trade debts had to be
settled through the clearing system. Many Jewish company owners had
meanwhile emigrated and subsequently asked the Swiss Clearing Office to
exempt their debtors from having to go through the clearing system. This
would have enabled Swiss debtors to transfer the outstanding amounts directly
to the original owners of the companies that had supplied them. The authorities
normally refused such requests, however, with the result that the amount
owed was paid into a blocked account within Nazi-controlled territory and was
thus lost as far as the creditor was concerned. Exceptions were made only in the
case of creditors who had fled to Switzerland and might need support. In 1939,
the German Clearing House (Deutsche Verrechnungskasse) complained about these
exemptions, whereupon the Swiss Clearing Office decided to «deal with the
imminent disputes in a rather dilatory and vague manner». 63
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