Mass Claims and Dormant Swiss Accounts

MASS CLAIMS AND DORMANT SWISS ACCOUNTS*

A. Claims to Dormant Swiss Bank Accounts: Ambiguity in the Scope of Arbitration

What is a “non-Swiss” account?

In 1997 an independent committee representing both Jewish groups and Swiss bankers established in Zürich a Claims Resolution Tribunal (CRT)¹ to resolve disputes over dormant Swiss bank deposits, some of which belonged to victims of Nazi persecution.² These assets had generated class actions in New York,³ as well as considerable acrimony in Swiss-American commercial relationships.⁴

The CRT was set up to hear claims to accounts opened by “non-Swiss” persons that had been inactive since the end of the Second World War and published by the Swiss Bankers Association.⁵