Treasure hunt for $1 billion of Nazi looted cash hidden in Swiss bank account

It has been discovered that there may be $1 billion of Nazi-looted cashhidden in a Swiss bank account. This has sparked a treasure hunt.

A list with the names of Nazis and sympathisers

A 500-page document with the names of 12,000 Nazis – believed to have been destroyed decades ago – was recently rediscovered in a warehouse in Argentina. The list contains names of former Nazis and sympathisers who fled to Argentina after the end of World War II, as reported by the Mirror.

The names on the list belonged to the German Union of Syndicates - a cover for Nazis who had fled to the South American country. It was created in the early 1940s by an Argentine parliamentary commission and includes details of all those who transferred money – thought to have been stolen from Jewish victims – to an account in Switzerland. The account is believed to belong to the Credit Suisse bank.

A treasure hunt for £813,980,000

This has sparked a treasure hunt to find the lost fortune, thought to be worth approximately £813,980,000 (almost $1,000,000,000), as reported by Metro. The money is rumoured to have been sitting untouched in a single account for the past 78 years.

The list was found by Argentinian investigator Pedro Filipuzzi who then gave it to the Simon Wiesenthal Center – a Jewish human rights organisation which carries out Holocaust research and fights anti-semitism.

Officials from the organisation said they had written to Credit Suisse vice-president Christian Kung, saying:

We believe it very probable that these dormant accounts hold monies looted from Jewish victims, under the Nuremberg Aryanization laws of the 1930s. We are aware that you already have claimants as alleged heirs of Nazis in the list.

It is understood that the Center has requested access to Credit Suisse’s archives to recover the funds on behalf of the few remaining Holocaust survivors.

Dr Ariel Gelblung, who works for the organisation, said:

Not all of the 12,000 people on that list were people who transferred Nazi money to Germany, but all the people who did so are on that list. The bank has to open its files so we can investigate.

Read more:

⋙ 101-year-old ex-Nazi guard found guilty of being an accessory in over 3,500 murders

⋙ Irma Grese, the 18-year-old girl who tortured her prisoners to death during World War II

⋙ Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemns Vladimir Putin’s comparison of the Ukraine war to WW2