U.S. judge: Swiss banks trying to 'delay justice'

Haaretz ^ | 2/21/2004 | Associated Press

[yonif]

NEW YORK - A federal judge said Swiss banks are trying to "delay justice and prevent access to the truth" in their arguments to limit access to information about Holocaust victims' bank accounts during the Nazi era.

Actions by the banks "bring to mind the theory that if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it," Judge Edward Korman of U.S. District Court in Brooklyn wrote in a decision released Thursday.

In the decision, reported in Saturday's editions of The New York Times, Korman wrote, "The 'big lie' for the Swiss banks is that during the Nazi era and its wake, the banks never engaged in substantial wrongdoing."

Korman's opinion was part of a legal battle over the handling of a $1.25 billion settlement from the banks to resolve a 1998 class-act lawsuit filed by Holocaust victims and their relatives.

The lawsuit said victims and their families who deposited money in the banks for safekeeping before or during World War II were unable to reclaim their money.

Court officials have said that the banks are hindering the distribution of the settlement. A lawyer overseeing the process said in October that the banks were restricting access to information about the accounts, citing bank secrecy laws.

Thursday's decision rejected the bank's arguments against increasing access to the accounts but stopped short of ordering the banks to cooperate further.

In a prepared statement from Zurich, a lawyer for the banks, Roger Witten, told the Times, "While we disagree with many of Judge Korman's statements, we hope the focus going forward will be on the prompt distribution of the settlement funds and on full reconciliation for all concerned."

Witten told the Times that the banks had paid the $1.25 million and did not dispute the findings of inquiries into their actions during the Nazi era.

[Carolinamom]

Is it 1.25 MILLION or 1.25 BILLION? This article gives both figures.

[yonif]

New York Post reports it as Billion.

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/18542.htm