A list of 2600 unclaimed dormant bank accounts was made public yesterday
Wednesday, December 16, by Swiss Bankers Association which contains
over 2,600 accounts and 80 safe deposit boxes.
The total holding in these accounts is estimated at about 44 million
Swiss franc ($44.6 million).
The online list reveals that Swiss banks currently have around CHF44
million ($44.6 million) of unclaimed assets held in their vaults. In
addition, some 80 safe-deposit boxes containing unknown sums of
valuables have been listed as dormant.
An SBA statement said that for accounts that have
been idle since 1955, individuals have one year to make a claim or the
assets will be transfered to the federal government, while accounts
dating from 1954 or earlier, claimants have a five-year window.
"By publishing this information, the banks are making a last attempt to
re-establish contact with the customer," SBA Chief Chief executive,
Claude-Alain Margelish said in a statement.
"This publication gives customers and their legal heirs another
opportunity to assert their claims to dormant assets before the banks
must then transfer these definitely to the government" he added.
The criteria for listing such assets is an account containing at least
CHF500 where contact with the holder has been lost for the last 60
years. Heirs to such assets have one year to assert a claim (five years
if bank contact with the client was lost prior to 1955) before accounts
are liquidated and assets handed to the government.
The online publication of dormant accounts has been forced by a change
to Swiss banking laws at the start of the year. Claude-Alain Margelisch,
praised the development for providing better “legal certainty” for
banks.
The issue of dormant accounts has dogged Swiss banks since revelations
in the 1990s of some banks holding on to assets of Jewish clients killed
in the Holocaust.
In 2013, a fund set up to compensate Holocaust survivors and victims’
heirs closed down after handing out some $1.24 billion.
The SBA insists that the current list of dormant accounts has nothing to
do with this issue, which was settled in 1998 after heirs of account
holders brought a class action lawsuit in the United States. Instead,
the law change is merely Switzerland catching up with other financial
centres that have had dormant account rules in place for years.
Following the Holocaust era scandal, the SBA tightened up procedures for
tracking down owners or heirs of dormant accounts. Since 1996 it has
been possible for people to trace assets of heirs using the Swiss
Banking Ombudsman.
According to the SBA, the ombudsman was able to track down CHF52 million
and 42 safe-deposit boxes which were subsequently transferred to their
legal owners between 2001 and 2014
