For the first time, examination of the accounts is being taken away from the banks. Four banks have been picked as a sample group for examining methods of authenticating accounts.
The World Jewish Congress, the Jewish Agency and the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) have agreed to set up an independent panel to handle requests to locate bank accounts of Holocaust victims. The agreement was approved by the Independent Committee of Eminent Persons, a joint committee of Jewish organizations and the SBA. The committee is chaired by former US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. This is the first time Swiss banks have agreed to give an independent body the power to handle and decide the issue.
The Volcker Committee decided to appoint three judges to the panel, one each from the US, Switzerland and Israel. The panel will be aided by an administrative office to receive requests from heirs. At the same time, the names of dormant accounts already discovered will be published. The panel will prescribe lenient rules of evidence, taking into account the difficulty of supplying hard evidence in light of the Holocaust circumstances and the intervening years since the deposits were made.
The committee also decided to allow the petitioners and their legal representatives to appear before the panel to present their claims. No similar mechanism was prescribed for the banks to present their claims. Decisions will be final; there will be no right of appeal. The banks will have to pay heirs the adjudged sums immediately; but the banks will be then be free of any liability should new claimants for the same account appear afterwards.
At the same time, The Volcker Committee picked four banks as a test group in which to test methods of locating accounts of Holocaust victims. The bank are Swiss Bank Corporation and Credit Suisse, (two of Switzerland’s three largest banks), Banque Cantonale Vaudoise and St. Gallische Kantonalbank, St. Gallen, which will represent the regional banks. The announcement emphasized that these banks were chosen as representative of the entire Swiss banking system, and not because of any specific information.