How Credit Suisse Became Entangled in Nazi-Era Crimes — and Why Accountability Is Still Elusive

5th Feb 2026
How Credit Suisse Became Entangled in Nazi-Era Crimes — and Why Accountability Is Still Elusive When investigations examine events that took place more than 80 years ago, the assumption is often that history—not accountability—is the focus. What makes the renewed scrutiny of Credit Suisse different is not the age of the conduct, but the fact that a modern, independent investigation uncovered new evidence and then was forced to stop before its work was complete. The case has reopened questions many readers are still trying to understand: how can serious institutional exposure resurface generations later, why do investigations into historic wrongdoing so often stall, and what prevents full accountability even when new findings emerge? These questions matter not just for historians, but for regulators, financial institutions, and the public trust that underpins modern banking systems. The investigation’s partial conclusions—and its abrupt halt—illustrate how institutional risk can persist long after the original harm occurred, especially when legal and structural barriers limit how far scrutiny can go. What Investigators Uncovered The inquiry was commissioned to reassess Credit Suisse’s conduct during and after the Second World War, building on earlier examinations of dormant accounts and wartime banking practices. According to findings released so far, the bank held or administered accounts linked to assets stripped from Jewish citizens under Nazi policies. Investigators also identified financial connections tied to postwar escape networks—commonly referred to as “ratlines”—used by Nazi officials fleeing Europe, including routes to South America. These findings do not suggest a single, centrally directed conspiracy. Instead, they describe fragmented institutional involvement: local branches, individual account relationships, and administrative decisions operating within secrecy regimes and wartime constraints. This kind of decentralised exposure is typical of large financial institutions operating across borders during periods of political extremism. External legal and historical experts, including lawyers from Jenner & Block, were engaged to trace these links and assess their significance. Their work was expected to deepen understanding of how financial systems interacted with regimes engaged in systematic dispossession and postwar evasion. Why Oversight Failed Then—and Afterward Wartime conditions provide only a partial explanation for how such exposure occurred. Swiss banking secrecy laws, geopolitical neutrality, and pressure from surrounding regimes created an environment in which questionable practices could persist with limited external oversight. But the more difficult issue lies in what happened after the war. Over the decades, multiple reviews sought to address Holocaust-era assets, resulting in disclosures, settlements, and compensation mechanisms. Each effort improved transparency incrementally, yet none fully resolved institutional responsibility. The latest investigation suggests that earlier inquiries may have been constrained by incomplete access to records, narrow mandates, or institutional reluctance to revisit sensitive material. This pattern reflects a broader problem in legacy accountability cases: safeguards designed to balance legal risk, reputational harm, and historical responsibility often limit how exhaustive later reviews can be. As a result, accountability becomes partial—acknowledged, but never fully tested. The Accountability Barrier: Legal Privilege The most consequential development in the current inquiry is not what it revealed, but what it cannot examine. A legal privilege dispute has halted further investigative work, restricting access to materials considered protected under confidentiality rules. While privilege is a cornerstone of modern legal systems, its use in historical accountability inquiries introduces a structural limit on truth-finding. Privilege disputes are uniquely difficult to overcome in cases like this because they do not hinge on factual disagreement, but on legal boundaries. Even where there is public interest in disclosure, investigators may lack the authority to compel access once privilege is asserted. Courts are typically cautious about eroding these protections, particularly when the original communications were created under different legal regimes. The result is an investigation that ends not with definitive conclusions, but with unresolved questions—an outcome that frustrates both accountability advocates and institutions seeking closure. Why This Still Has Real-World Consequences Unresolved historical exposure is not merely symbolic. For financial institutions, it affects governance credibility, regulatory trust, and long-term reputational risk. In an era when environmental, social, and governance standards play a growing role in oversight and investment decisions, lingering accountability gaps carry increasing weight. The issue is further complicated by corporate continuity. Credit Suisse no longer operates independently, having been absorbed into UBS following a government-backed rescue. This raises enduring questions about successor responsibility: when one institution inherits another’s assets and obligations, to what extent does it also inherit unresolved historical exposure? For regulators and policymakers, the case highlights the limits of retrospective accountability. Even when new evidence surfaces, legal and procedural barriers can prevent full examination, leaving systems reliant on partial truths. How These Investigations Usually Conclude—and Why This One Is Different In most legacy accountability cases, independent commissions or expert panels review available records, issue findings, and recommend remedial steps such as disclosures, apologies, or compensation frameworks. Rarely do such inquiries result in formal legal liability decades after the fact. What sets the Credit Suisse case apart is the interruption caused by the privilege dispute. Typically, investigations end because investigators exhaust the evidence. Here, the limit is imposed externally, leaving an unresolved gap in accountability. This distinction is critical: it transforms what could have been a historical review into an ongoing question of institutional responsibility. Fragmented Responsibility and Institutional Longevity Another defining feature of the case is the absence of a single, identifiable decision-maker. Responsibility is dispersed across time, jurisdictions, and organisational layers. Individuals directly involved are long deceased, while the institution itself has evolved through mergers, restructurings, and regulatory changes. This fragmentation does not eliminate accountability, but it changes its nature. Instead of individual culpability, scrutiny focuses on systemic design: how secrecy regimes, decentralised operations, and legal protections allowed harmful conduct to remain obscured for decades. Government bodies, including inquiries linked to the US Senate, have shown continued interest in these issues precisely because they illuminate how power operates across generations, outlasting the people who exercised it. Why Full Resolution Is So Rare Cases like this reveal a hard truth about institutional accountability: time strengthens legal barriers even as it weakens moral certainty. Records degrade, laws change, and evidentiary standards rise. Meanwhile, institutions grow larger and more complex, making comprehensive review increasingly difficult. Privilege, jurisdictional limits, and corporate restructuring all contribute to this dynamic. Together, they create a system in which wrongdoing may be acknowledged without being fully mapped, and responsibility may be recognised without being fully assigned. This does not mean accountability efforts are meaningless. Rather, it explains why they often conclude with incomplete answers—and why public dissatisfaction persists even after formal inquiries end. Accountability Over Time The renewed scrutiny of Credit Suisse’s Nazi-era links was intended to clarify unresolved questions about financial institutions’ roles in one of history’s darkest periods. Instead, it has underscored how difficult full accountability can be when modern legal structures intersect with historic harm. The investigation has expanded understanding, but it has also revealed the limits of contemporary systems when confronting legacy exposure. Legal safeguards designed to ensure fairness can, over time, become structural constraints on accountability—particularly when institutions endure long after the individuals who shaped their conduct. In that sense, the unresolved questions may be as instructive as the findings already released. They illustrate not only what happened, but how power, risk, and responsibility continue to interact across generations—and why restoring trust is often harder once the opportunity for full scrutiny has passed.