Are all requests processed ?
Since mid-1997, the Research Office will accept only those requests relating to assets for which bank-customer contact ceased after 1945. This change resulted in a massive decrease in requests since July 1997. From that time, the number of new requests that fall within the jurisdiction of the Research Office has stabilised to an average level of around 40 per month.
By the end of 1998, 269 questionnaires had been transmitted directly to ATAG Ernst & Young upon reception and 43 questionnaires were still not completed. 89 questionnaires did not result in bank inquiries and of these, 22 concerned cases where the claimant ceased contact after having been sent a request for complementary information. The 67 remaining cases did not proceed to a bank investigation for other reasons (inadmissibility, abuses, less than 10 years since the last contact, etc.).
The Research Office deemed 2927 questionnaires admissible for claims to proceed, of which 1878 were for pre-1945 cases and 1049 for post-1945 cases. As of 3 December 1998, 4143 names and information relative to presumed clients were submitted to the banks, representing a total of 16 lists sent out since 3 June 1996. This figure comprises 2881 individuals who died before the end of the war and 1262 presumed customers who had some contact with their bank after the end of World War Two.
The banks discovered 64 cases where the name being investigated proved to have an existing business relation still with the bank (19 of which were for pre-1945 cases and 45 for post-1945 cases). The average success rate (the ratio of positively corresponding names per accepted questionnaire) therefore comes to 2.2% (or 1% of questionnaires relative to the pre-1945 period and 4.3% for the post-1945 period). Requests for post-1945 assets are generally better documented, with more chances of success as a result.
The low percentage of successful cases is linked to the fact that few of them present tangible evidence. It is not rare to find the following justification for the claim : “My family was rich, therefore we must have had money in Switzerland.” Many claimants discontinued their search after receiving the questionnaire.
If deemed admissible, the claimant may provide several names under which he thinks the account may have been opened. Additionally, in order to help find persons who may have changed their names along with their country of residence, the Research Office has set in place a procedure for discovering possible analogies between similarly written or sounding names.