Historian claims Swiss banks may hold further Second World War secrets

Bank archives may still hold secrets about Swiss actions during the Second World War and should be re-examined, especially those of UBS, says Marc Perrenoud, a historian who worked on the Bergier Commission, an independent commission of experts that investigated Switzerland's wartime past. +Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox "The Bergier Commission uncovered so much documentation that we couldn't go through it all in the five years of our mandate, which ran from 1996-2001," the historian told the Le Temps newspaper on Tuesday. He made the remarks after news at the weekend that Swiss bank UBS is working with an independent ombudsman to shed light on Nazi-linked accounts. This followed a Wall Street Journal newspaper report that some accounts at collapsed bank Credit Suisse, which UBS bought in 2023, had not been disclosed in earlier investigations. The WSJ cited a December 2024 letter from the ombudsman to the US Senate which said his probe had uncovered a ...