NEW YORK, April 18 (Reuters) – A committee of U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday mentioned troubled Swiss financial institution Credit score Suisse Group (CSGN.S) hampered a multiyear investigation into the servicing of Nazi shoppers and Nazi-linked accounts.
Credit score Suisse commissioned an investigation into allegations levied by a human rights group that the financial institution held potential Nazi-linked accounts and did not disclose them, even throughout Holocaust-related probes a long time earlier. A Senate committee’s latest investigation into the matter discovered the financial institution hindered the probe and “inexplicably terminated” an impartial reviewer overseeing it.
The “data we have obtained exhibits the financial institution established an unnecessarily inflexible and slim scope, and refused to comply with new leads uncovered throughout the course of the evaluation,” Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, the rating member of the Senate Finances Committee, mentioned in an announcement.
Credit score Suisse defended its inside evaluation in an announcement, saying that the probe turned up no proof to help key claims from the Simon Wiesenthal Heart that dormant accounts serviced by Credit score Suisse held belongings from Holocaust victims.
A consultant for AlixPartners, the consulting agency Credit score Suisse employed for the probe, didn’t reply instantly to a request for remark.
However the Senate committee mentioned extra work must be accomplished to trace down the worth of belongings of sure accounts held by Nazis on the financial institution within the post-1945 interval.
The committee mentioned in an announcement it had opened its personal investigation after receiving “credible allegations of potential wrongdoing” associated to the interior probe, together with the termination of the ombudsman overseeing it.
A spokesperson for the ombudsman, Neil Barofsky, declined to remark. His report, which the committee obtained through a subpoena, discovered many questions had been left “unanswered” after Credit score Suisse determined to halt the evaluation.
Reporting by Chris Prentice; enhancing by Jonathan Oatis
: .