61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

as long as 1949. Between 1952 and 1968, UBS used the designation «Ronac»
for 144 deposits by customers with whom it had had no contact for more than
ten years. However, it included the Ronac deposits in its reports when the
Federal Decree of 1962 came into force. Nevertheless, in 1969 the amount of
2,815,912 francs appeared as an «unclaimed asset» transferred to Ronac. 87 From
the documents still available today, it is difficult to ascertain for a fact whether
the transfer was made to Ronac in order to avoid reporting assets. From a
historical perspective, however, it was a mechanism that afforded the bank such
options.
Customers who lived in Central and Eastern Europe were disadvantaged by the
implementation of the Registration Decree to the extent that the Swiss Bankers
Association recommended that for the reasons cited above no attempt be made
to locate them.
As far preserving the value of deposits, the banks interpreted it as their fiduciary
duty to convert bank accounts into security deposits in certain cases involving
wealthy customers with substantial sums. In 1957, Swiss Bank Corporation in
Zurich stated that these newly created deposits would be «managed in the
interest of the client». The idea was to manage the assets in the interest of
customers about whom no further information was available, naturally. As a
result of profit-oriented management, these assets increased in value. Here too
it was evident that security deposits tended to increase in value, whereas
accounts and safe-deposit boxes were prone to disappear through the nonpayment
of interest and constant charging of fees. In 1949, Union Bank of
Switzerland decided to stop paying interest on accounts if it had had no contact
with the account holder for more than ten years (however, other foreign
customers too stopped receiving interest at that time). In 1957, the Basel
Cantonal Bank (Basler Kantonalbank) decided to adopt the same procedure for
accounts for which no holder’s address was known. However, as always, foreign
accounts, compared with other accounts in this category, received a low interest
rate of one percent. Between 1945 and 1999, Swiss Bank Corporation cancelled
a total of 735 dormant accounts because they had been eroded by fees. When
the fees for renting a safe-deposit box from the bank could no longer be paid
from another account, the safe-deposit boxes would be opened under supervision
and the assets sold and used up over several decades. Ten years after
discontinuing the worthless safe-deposit boxes, the documents contained
therein could also be destroyed.
To summarise, it is apparent that the claims of surviving Holocaust victims
were usually rejected under the pretext of banking secrecy and a clear preference
for continuity in private law. Over the many years of such rejections, a large
number of accounts were reduced to zero or almost.
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