Switzerland sends judge list of German firms with Swiss assets

Switzerland's federal archive has given a United States judge a list of 2,200 German firms which had bank accounts or other assets in Switzerland during World War Two.

The list was drawn up for the US district court judge, Edward Korman, before his final approval last month of the $1.25 billion (SFr2 billion) settlement by Switzerland’s two biggest banks with Holocaust victims or their heirs.

People who were used as slave labourers by German subsidiaries of Swiss firms, or by German firms which had money in Swiss banks, are entitled to claim under the settlement, reached in 1998.

Details of the list were not released. Archive spokesman, Guido Koller, told Swiss German radio on Wednesday that it covers the German firms’ links in Switzerland but contains no indication whether they used slave labourers.

The list contains information gathered at the end of the war in 1945 when the Swiss government ordered that the whereabouts of all German assets in the country be established. Koller stressed that it was provisional and intended as a working document.

The banks’ global settlement provided for the release of all claims not only against them but also against the Swiss government, the central bank, other commercial banks and Swiss industry.

Approving the deal on July 26, Korman demanded that any other Swiss companies that may have used slave labour should come forward within 30 days or face possible additional lawsuits in the United States.

Some Swiss companies have admitted that they used slave labour in German subsidiaries or subsequently took over implicated German companies.

swissinfo with agencies