ABSTRACT
It was in April 1996 that the dormant account crisis first started. The affair is to throw the Swiss banks, and through them the entire Swiss nation into a critical process that would last for more than two years. The first created a Bank Ombudsman whose task it is to facilitate the search for dormant accounts at the plus minus 400 Swiss banks. The search for dormant accounts belonging to nationals of Central and Eastern European countries quickly led to Switzerland. Indeed, many endangered Jews seemed to have opted to put their assets in Swiss banks. October 1996 also saw the Senate Banking Committee give a second hearing on the Swiss banks and dormant accounts of Holocaust victims. The report especially faulted the Swiss National Bank's purchases of Nazi Gold from the Reichsbank because the gold had in part been looted from the central banks of occupied countries or from Holocaust victims.
