A fresh wave of revelations about long-buried Nazi-era accounts in Switzerland is casting a new shadow over UBS AG, the country’s largest bank and a trusted financial partner to Gulf investors. Recent investigations by Eric Frey in Der Standard (link), Riva Pomerantz in Ami Magazine (link), and Peter Hell in BILD (link) have reignited questions surrounding dormant accounts linked to Jewish victims of the Holocaust—funds that may never have been fully disclosed or restituted.
Speaking exclusively with the Abu Dhabi Times, Dr. Gerhard Podovsovnik, Vice President of AEA Justinian Lawyers, said these revelations have created “an unprecedented legal opening” in the United States that could directly affect investors in the Gulf region. “The evidence now uncovered demonstrates that Swiss banks, including UBS, never completed their historical accountability,” he said. “For the U.S. courts, that’s grounds for reopening old settlements. For the Gulf, it’s a signal to reassess trust.”
Dr. Podovsovnik explained that newly found archives at Credit Suisse—now part of UBS—contain extensive, previously unexamined records of accounts active during the Nazi period. These findings, he said, contradict UBS’s repeated assurances that all such holdings were settled decades ago under the Korman Settlement. “If UBS made those statements knowing they were incomplete or false,” he added, “it amounts to fraud on the court.”
Under U.S. law, such a determination could trigger full discovery proceedings, allowing courts to subpoena UBS executives, unseal historical ledgers, and trace off-balance assets. “That’s where the Gulf connection becomes crucial,” Dr. Podovsovnik continued. “The same compliance systems that manage those archives also govern the portfolios of sovereign wealth funds and family offices in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Riyadh. If cracks exist in one area, they could appear elsewhere.”
Financial analysts in the UAE note that UBS holds billions in discretionary mandates for Middle Eastern clients, including sovereign wealth entities that rely on its Swiss-based custody operations. Any perception of instability or concealed exposure, they say, could ripple through cross-border asset management structures.
According to Dr. Podovsovnik, UBS inherited both the assets and the historical liabilities of Basler Handelsbank—a pre-war institution with proven financial ties to Nazi Germany. “That legacy doesn’t vanish just because the nameplate changed,” he remarked. “The unanswered question is whether UBS has continued to benefit from unclaimed wealth while presenting itself as fully compliant and transparent.”
UBS has publicly denied the allegations, stating that no Nazi-linked accounts remain undisclosed. However, the mounting body of independent reporting—spanning Austrian, German, and American sources—has intensified calls for transparency. Within the Gulf’s financial sector, many now see the case as a test of Swiss banking’s credibility in an era when historical accountability and modern compliance increasingly overlap.
Dr. Podovsovnik urged Gulf investors to take a proactive stance: “The time for quiet confidence has passed. Major investors should demand full disclosure of UBS’s archival holdings, potential legacy risks, and internal compliance reviews. Transparency, not size, defines a bank’s strength.”
As the U.S. prepares to weigh reopening decades-old settlements, the implications extend far beyond European history. For Gulf investors, the UBS affair has become more than a legal curiosity—it is a barometer of trust in global finance, where the past, it seems, still writes the balance sheets of the present.
