According to a report, Credit Suisse is said to have concealed almost 900 suspected Nazi accounts. UBS is resisting renegotiating the historical settlement between Swiss banks and Jewish organizations.
Feb 4, 2026, 5:25 a.mFeb 4, 2026, 5:25 a.m
Renzo Ruf, Washington / ch media
History threatens to repeat itself. Once again, a major Swiss bank is in the crossfire of criticism from Republicans and Democrats in Washington – this time because UBS is allegedly refusing to fully examine the history of Credit Suisse, which it took over three years ago.
UBS is under pressure in connection with the CS takeover in the USA. (symbol image)Image: Universal Images Group Editorial
And once again, high-ranking representatives of a Swiss bank are being paraded in a congressional hearing. “They’re still all about the money,” thundered conservative Senator John Kennedy on Tuesday after cross-examining UBS executive Rob Karofsky. During World War II, CS knowingly did business with representatives of the Nazi regime, Kennedy said. And now UBS does not want to make any further compensation payments for these newly discovered misconduct.
Karofsky rejected this allegation. But he and Barbara Levi, UBS’s chief legal officer, were fighting a losing battle during the Justice Committee’s two-hour meeting. They tried in vain to make it clear to the senators that UBS did not want to reopen the settlement with major banks concluded in 1999.
UBS top manager Robert “Rob” Karofsky is opposed to renegotiating the big bank settlement from the 1990s.zvg
One reason for this demand is Neil Barofsky’s research, which he presented as an “independent ombudsperson” on Tuesday. The bank scare has been searching the archives of the former CS for two years for possible files that could document connections between the predecessor institutions of the former major bank and the Nazi regime.
Barofsky not only came across accounts of war criminals like Leo Volk, an SS Hauptsturmführer. He also said Tuesday that Credit Suisse helped former Nazis escape to Argentina after the end of World War II. The CS rented a building on Marktgasse in Bern to the government of the South American country, which was part of the “Rat Line” – Argentina’s clandestine attempt to smuggle German war criminals into the country. Money was also used to bribe officials in Switzerland through the CS accounts an interim report which was presented by Barofsky.
UBS has powerful opponents
Such findings have made Jewish organizations in the USA sit up and take notice. They suspect that Credit Suisse knew about these misconduct as early as 1999, when the major Swiss banks agreed to a settlement after a long legal dispute and paid $1.25 billion. Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, recently told the Bloomberg news agency: The 17 Jewish organizations that reached an agreement with UBS and CS at the time “probably left $5 to $10 billion on the table” because time was of the essence and the full extent of the Swiss financial center’s involvement in the Holocaust was not known.
Billionaire heir Lauder is an influential figure. As a political ally of Donald Trump, he supports the Republican president with ideas and financial donations. Last week, Trump nominated Lauder’s son-in-law, Kevin Warsh, as the new head of the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve also oversees major banks like UBS, which is seeking to expand its business in the world’s largest economy.
The UBS asset manager Karofsky, who introduced himself to the Senate committee as a “proud Jewish American,” reiterated on Tuesday that the behavior of the major Swiss banks during World War II was “terrible and shameful.” But he didn’t want to know anything about renegotiating the settlement. The agreement settled all “known and unknown” claims, he said. This was known to all parties involved.
Dispute with the Simon Wiesenthal Center
A legal dispute in which UBS and the Holocaust research institute Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles are involved should also be understood in this context. This dispute primarily revolves around a series of documents that are intended to provide information about the history of the big bank settlement – an exchange between high-ranking CS representatives and their lawyers from the 1990s.
Actually, the legal dispute revolves around the question of whether the big bank settlement can be renegotiated if necessary if it turns out that Credit Suisse did not tell the whole truth at the time.
UBS representative Karofsky said the bank wanted New York federal judge Edward Korman to clarify the 1999 agreement. But the research institute, which works closely with Neil Barofsky, describes the legal dispute as an attempt by UBS to intimidate it.
Details of this process are under wraps. However, Senator Ted Cruz announced during the Senate hearing that UBS wanted to prohibit the Simon Wiesenthal Center from speaking publicly about the role of Swiss banks in the Holocaust. This puts the existence of the research institute at risk, said Rabbi Abraham Cooper. UBS representative Levi, however, rejected this representation. “This is nothing new,” she told Senator Cruz as he read from a UBS court filing. And: The major Swiss bank does not want to silence the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Federal Judge Korman approved the big bank settlement in 1999 and is very familiar with the matter. So far, however, he has not been able to end the dispute between UBS and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; Korman recently announced that he would convene a court session in mid-March.
The final report will follow at the end of the year
Neil Barofsky himself said he was concerned about the legal dispute and UBS’s demand that the Simon Wiesenthal Center no longer question the settlement it co-signed in 1999. He also noted that he relies on the help of Jewish organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center to do good work.
He was unable to say on Tuesday whether the documents around which the dispute ostensibly revolves were relevant to the planned final report. But there are indications that the names of people who were at the center of his work appeared in these files, Barofsky said. He announced that he would submit a final report by the end of the year. By this point, Judge Korman in New York will probably have spoken out.