61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

If the current owner (who was obliged to return the property) had acted in
good faith, he was, according to Article 4 RGB, entitled to reimbursement
of the purchase price from the seller who, if he had also acted in good faith,
was likewise entitled to recourse against the seller in question. This chain of
recourse only ended with the person who had acquired the looted property in
bad faith. The implementation of this system was likely to fail in that the
vendor was insolvent or could not be prosecuted in Switzerland. In this case,
the court could award the person who had acquired the property in good faith
appropriate compensation at the expense of the Confederation, provided he
had acquired the confiscated property from a vendor acting in bad faith
(Article 4, (3) RGB). 47
For the two categories of looted assets, works of art and securities, a total of 800
claims from Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands,
Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, for a total of 3.4 million francs, were
submitted to the Chamber of Looted Assets. The court hearings lingered on
after the time limit for the submission of claims expired at the end of 1947.
Most of the individual claims for securities were settled in 1949; the Dutch
claims – which had been submitted as a class action – were finally resolved in a
settlement, but the negotiations lasted until 1951.
The Washington Agreement and the lump-sum agreement of 1952
Besides the legislation on looted assets, the negotiations held in Washington
between Switzerland and the victorious Western Allies in the spring of 1946
were a direct consequence of the Currie Agreement. The delegation, headed by
Walter Stucki, did not include any bank representatives; they assumed that
their interests would be protected by the official Swiss delegation and were to
have this confirmed in full in the medium term.
The Washington Agreement of 25 May 1946 contained provisions on the two
most important issues on the agenda concerning the reparations payments
demanded by the Allies: the Gold transferred to the Swiss National Bank by the
German Reichsbank and the German assets in Switzerland which had been
frozen since February 1945. The Allies’ demands for the restitution of looted
gold, which at 250 million francs constituted only a sixth of the total gold transactions
and a fifth of the total gold purchases by the Swiss National Bank, were
settled speedily (see section 4.5). The fact must again be stressed that
Switzerland declared this payment to be neither a restitution nor a reparations
payment but a «voluntary» contribution to the reconstruction of war-ravaged
Europe, a view not shared by the Allies.
As to the far more complex question of the liquidation of German assets, the
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