Swiss banks Thursday published on the Internet the records of thousands of World War II-era accounts as part of an effort to return hundreds of millions of dollars to Nazi victims or their descendants.
The publication was the result of a settlement reached in June between the banks and Nazi victims. The banks’ refusal to release the records had angered Holocaust survivors and infuriated a federal judge overseeing the case.
Lawyers in the case said in June that Credit Suisse Group Inc. and UBS AG would publish the names of approximately 3,000 accounts opened during the Nazi era. They were to open databases of Nazi-era accounts for comparison with a list of thousands hoping to recover family assets from Swiss banks.
The list of names was posted to the Web site of the tribunal overseeing the distribution of the funds — www.crt-ii.org. It includes more than 3,000 account records.
The agreement is intended to resolve much of the outstanding contention between the banks and Holocaust survivors, who agreed to a $1.25 billion settlement of their lawsuit in 1998.
The survivors and their families accused the Swiss banks of stealing, concealing or sending to the Nazis hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Jewish holdings and destroying bank records to cover the paper trail.
