*Swiss and U.S. banks face huge apartheid lawsuits
odiousdebts.org
ZURICH -- A U.S. lawyer who helped force Swiss banks into a $1.25-billion (U.S.) settlement for Nazi victims said yesterday he would file suit against top Swiss and U.S. banks for propping up South Africa's former apartheid regime.
The announcement by Edward Fagan, a maverick lawyer known for his controversial tactics, was made amid high drama.
A jeering, jostling crowd, angry at what they saw as another attempt to smear Switzerland's name, forced the lawyer to abandon a news conference on Zurich's Paradeplatz, home of Credit Suisse's headquarters and the main Zurich offices of UBS, the country's two biggest banks.
Mr. Fagan later told reporters at a central hotel he was seeking as much as $50-billion in reparations in a class action suit against UBS and Credit Suisse as well as U.S.-based Citicorp Inc., which owns Citibank.
He alleges the banks provided funds to the apartheid government between 1985 and 1993, when the regime was running short of cash because of United Nations sanctions. The banks have dismissed the claims as unjustified.
The Swiss banks have said Mr. Fagan's claims had no legal basis. "Attaching responsibility would not only be preposterous but unsubstantiated by the facts," a CS spokeswoman said.
The Swiss government also dismissed the suit.
Although Mr. Fagan said he expected the suits to be filed yesterday in Manhattan federal court, the papers had not arrived by late in the day. A secretary for the Livingston, N.J., law firm that will be filing the suits said they were not expected to be filed before this afternoon. Mr. Fagan made a name for himself by representing victims of the Nazis and their heirs who sued Swiss banks in the 1990s.
*Wait until they find the Isra'Eli connections. |
