61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

financial sector was in no way dependent on the unclaimed assets that it
retained. The amounts involved were too small for this. The image of a banking
system that built its wealth on assets expropriated from victims of the Nazi
regime is not based on the facts. Had the banks proceeded in a proper manner
and settled generously all the claims filed by survivors and heirs by taking restitution
measures, neither the real capital nor the operational structure required
for rapid expansion would have been adversely affected. The improvement in
the country’s image that might have resulted from introducing special legislation
appropriate to the adverse circumstances of the time would probably have
increased confidence in Switzerland as a centre for asset management after 1945
still further. Top executives in the banks, however, assumed that they would
enhance their appeal to new customer segments by a resolute defence of banking
secrecy.
The banking system and the authorities therefore proved incapable of solving
the problem of unclaimed assets for five decades after the war. This failure now
represented a challenge for a new generation of senior bank executives who
tackled it with a view to providing a definitive solution that would be
acceptable to all involved. This also came about because the restoration of
private property in the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union
in the course of the 1990s amplified awareness of property rights in general and
because the increasing globalization of the financial and capital markets
included the Swiss banks. In the course of the past five years the heated debate
on the issue resulted – within the framework of an arbitrational procedure – in
the surrender of assets to heirs who had previously been ignored. The restitution
of accounts which had been closed during the Nazi era or in the years thereafter,
or the payment of a reasonable amount in compensation, is still in progress.
6.4 Restitution Questions in Relation to Insurance Companies
The problem of restitution in the insurance sector has been the subject of much
less research than the parallel issue of dormant bank accounts. 1998 saw the
emergence of the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims
(ICHEIC or «Eagleburger Commission»), supported by the US insurance supervisory
authority, European insurance companies, Jewish organizations, and the
State of Israel, which identified a substantial number of insurance policies that
had been paid out by Swiss companies to the German authorities. However, the
ICE’s investigations have taken place independently of the ICHEIC, whose
mandate to track down and estimate the number of potential individual claims
did not coincide with the objectives of the ICE.
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