61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

whether at all and if so, how to make these finding aids available to the ICE
team. In the case of the UBS, the ICE received an inventory of the holdings of
the former Union Bank of Switzerland (Schweizerische Bankgesellschaft, SBG) and
the Swiss Bank Corporation (Schweizerischer Bankverein, SBV) records in 1997.
It was only in early 2001 that researchers stumbled across the newly created
IRAS system which was able to compile the wealth of information on problem
areas and open up new research paths. When the UBS finally provided the ICE
with an IRAS printout, it was still of only limited use, albeit decisive in some
areas. In this case, it is clear that the ICE and the bank each applied a different
definition of «archive». Whereas the bank regarded the newly created finding
aid as a corporate management tool for its own use and not necessarily to be
shared with the ICE, the ICE operated on the premise that finding aids are an
integral part of the archive, and that this was a case of improper conduct.
A contribution was also made by the ICE to this process of mutual enrichment.
Its research work was constantly supported by internal company staff, the socalled
«explorers», especially when a problem area new to them was to be opened
up. In this case, the ICE had a headstart on the information needed as it had
already made some investigations in other archives. However, it was also impossible
to rule out further documents turning up at a later date and being published
by the company, particularly in those fields of research in which the ICE has
broken new ground and brought previously unknown events to light. In this
connection, it is worthwhile reminding the reader again of the scale of the
available resources. Although – with a total budget of 22 million francs – the
ICE appears to be a huge project in terms of serious historical research, it was
dwarfed by the scale of the task that had to be or might have been performed.
Naturally, those companies that had for decades taken care of their archives and
had consequently amassed a wealth of resources and were equipped with
efficient finding aids, were of particular importance to the ICE in the reconstruction
of complicated capital transactions and finding evidence of economic
relationships with the Axis powers. Time and again, this caused feelings of
uneasiness in the companies concerned because they presumed that a wellstocked
and professionally managed archive would result in their receiving
substantial exposure in the ICE studies, unlike similar companies which had
parted with their historical source material or did not have an inventory of it.
In the wider context of ICE research, however, such problems did not arise since
companies that the Allies had considered suspect during the war were closely
observed and left behind many traces in source material which is accessible. For
example, the USA carried out comprehensive research, particularly in the
context of the «Safehaven» Programme, into Swiss companies which had been
involved in problematic transactions. Like the Western Allies, at the end of the
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