A list of accounts held in Swiss banks up until 1945, including assets left by Holocaust victims, will be advertised today in the newspapers of 28 countries. The Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) said yesterday the lists would be accompanied by local telephone numbers for people to enter claims, a procedure supervised by auditing firm, ATAG Ernst & Young.
The long-awaited list covers names and details of accounts opened by foreigners before the end of the war in 1945, and whose owners have not been heard from in at least 10 years.
"It will take the form of an advertisement that will be more than a page long in some newspapers, depending on the format," SBA spokesman, Ms Silvia Matile, said. An Internet site for inquiries will be announced today.
Ms Matile said the press advertisements would appear in Europe, Britain, the US, Canada, Argentina, Israel, South Africa and Australia. In London, the Times newspaper said the ad would run to three pages. The list will run in such papers as the New York Times, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Le Monde, and the Jerusalem Post.
The Times also revealed British names on the list, which it said included a Kenneth Wadd from Cornwall, Emil Muller from Liverpool and Londoners Paul Mayer and Amy Carey.
"We have selected newspapers in countries around the world where there are populations of Jews who may be account-holders or their heirs," said Mr Jeffrey Taufield, a senior partner at New York public relations firm, Kekst & Company, which has been retained by the SBA.
The news conference to announce the Internet site will be held at Zurich airport. It will be attended by the SBA president, Mr Georg Krayer, the secretary general of the World Jewish Congress, Mr Israel Singer, and the former US central bank chairman, Mr Paul Volcker. Mr Volcker heads an independent commission set up by the WJC and Swiss banks to scour bank records for traces of Holocaust accounts.
Joe Carroll writes: US television researchers have discovered a Treasury Department document which claims that the Vatican stored 200 million Swiss francs (about £80 million) allegedly seized from Serbs and Jews by the Nazi-controlled Ustasha government in Croatia during the second World War.
The Vatican spokesman, Dr Joaquin Novarro-Valls, who denied the report, said it was based on an anonymous source "whose reliability is more than dubious".
The Treasury memorandum was discovered by researchers for a television programme on Switzerland's handling of Nazi gold.
According to today's Daily Telegraph, one Irish name appears on the list of pre-1945 account-holders, that of a John Darragh, from Belfast.