61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

However, the Swiss government failed to inform either the banks or the parliamentary
committees of the existence of this document. The banks likewise
ignored the problem. The fact that banking secrecy was enshrined in the Law
on Banks and Saving Institutions of 1934/35 reinforced the tradition of using
private law to protect property in Switzerland. This combination of guaranteed
ownership and legally backed discretion (breaches of banking secrecy were
punishable under criminal law as an offence requiring public prosecution) was
a major impetus for the expansion and the self-confidence of Switzerland as a
centre for asset management. The banking system had committed itself – as
shown in the chapter on gold transactions – to forming a quasi-autonomous
organisation free from government intervention. In the years after 1945, it
became apparent how successful the banks were in keeping the state out of
regulating the unblocking of victims’ assets as time and again it succeeded in
putting the government, which ought to have seized the initiative in this
matter, in its place.
In February 1947, the Legal Division of the Federal Political Department
presented for the first time the draft of a Federal Council’s Decree providing for
the registration of unclaimed assets in Switzerland. However, six months later,
under pressure from the Swiss Bankers Association, the government abandoned
the draft law. 63 In a counter-move, the Association conducted its own survey of
its members to determine the total value of «unclaimed victims’ assets». The
voluntary declaration and the assumption by the banks that by playing down
the problem (quantitatively) they could prevent the planned Registration
Decree in the long term, resulted in only the paltry sum of less than half a
million Swiss francs in total coming to light. 64 This poor result can also be
explained by the fact that in the early post-war years, the banks totally failed to
declare many assets since – depending on the bank’s internal definition – an
account was considered to be dormant only five, ten, or twenty years after the
last contact with the customer. Basically, however, it was the aim of many banks
to find as few unclaimed assets as possible. Some banks found it quite in order
to give false information. The Union Bank of Switzerland (Schweizerische Bankgesellschaft,
SBG), for example, reported that it had found no assets at all
belonging to victims of mass extermination. However, it can be proved even
now that in the course of freezing and reporting German assets in Switzerland
in 1945, it had come across customers whom it knew to have been deported by
the Nazis and who would therefore also have fallen into the category of assets
sought in 1947. 65 During these early post-war years, there was considerable
reluctance on the part of the banks to admit that there was any problem. Adolf
Jann, General Director of Union Bank of Switzerland and former Secretary of
the Swiss Bankers Association, stated in 1950 that «the best solution» would
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