Switzerland’s banking system — once synonymous with secrecy and neutrality — is again at the center of a growing international controversy. In an exclusive interview with the Abu Dhabi Times, Dr. Gerhard Podovsovnik, Vice President of AEA Justinian Lawyers, accused the Swiss state of “eighty years of moral evasion,” claiming that Swiss financial institutions still profit from assets looted during the Holocaust.
The interview has reignited decades-old questions about whether the global banking powerhouse ever fully confronted its wartime role or merely buried it beneath layers of diplomacy and confidentiality.
The Case for Disclosure
Dr. Podovsovnik’s legal team has filed a formal demand with the Swiss Federal Council, urging immediate legislation to compel every Swiss bank to reveal dormant accounts created before 1948. “The Bergier Report, commissioned by Switzerland itself, proved that its banks and the National Bank were willing accomplices to the Nazi regime,” Podovsovnik told the Abu Dhabi Times. “They bought stolen gold, profited from looted property, and closed their borders to Jewish refugees. That is not neutrality — that is complicity.”
His letter gives Switzerland seventy-two hours to respond. If the government refuses, the matter will move to U.S. federal courts, where his team plans to reopen the 1990s Global Settlement on grounds of “fraud on the court.” The lawsuit aims to enforce full financial transparency, global asset tracing, and the freezing of any funds tied to undisclosed wartime accounts.
Podovsovnik asserts that the Global Settlement of 1998–2000, long hailed as a milestone in restitution, was incomplete at best and deliberately misleading at worst. “Billions were hidden, and the archives were never truly opened,” he said. “Swiss prosperity after the war was not built on neutrality — it was built on stolen wealth.”
Rabbi Meir and the Larger Reckoning
Representing Rabbi Ephraim Meir, who claims inheritance rights to several dormant accounts within UBS, Podovsovnik says the case symbolizes a much broader injustice. “This is not only about money. It’s about truth,” he told the Abu Dhabi Times. “Thousands of Jewish families lost everything — their homes, their lives, and then their right to remembrance.”
He also criticized what he describes as Switzerland’s lingering culture of denial. “Antisemitism today doesn’t shout,” he said. “It whispers through legal technicalities and the preservation of silence.”
His proposal calls for a global audit — using AI-assisted forensic tools — to trace any undisclosed Nazi-linked funds that remain in circulation. Such an effort, he argues, would mark the first genuine step toward what he calls “moral rehabilitation” for Switzerland.
The full interview, published by the Abu Dhabi Times under the title “Switzerland Must Finally Face Its Moral Bankruptcy”, has quickly circulated across legal and financial networks.
Whether Switzerland will respond with transparency or continue to defend its legacy of discretion remains to be seen. But for the first time in years, the world’s quietest vaults are echoing with questions they can no longer lock away.
