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Floor Speech
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, for several Congresses, I and others in this body have been trying to bring attention to Swiss banks trying to hide assets that they accumulated during World War II and joining my colleagues in efforts to make sure that justice is done for the wealth and other private property that was taken from Jewish people who died in the Holocaust. So once again, I am back to give a report and an update on that effort.
In February of this year, I chaired a bipartisan hearing on my ongoing Credit Suisse Nazi accounts investigation. That hearing was supposed to, in part, highlight the collaborative and cooperative work of the bank UBS, which bought Credit Suisse, along with Neil Barofsky, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the Senate Judiciary Committee, and what we had achieved up to that point.
UBS had committed to fully exposing the wrongs committed by Credit Suisse. After all, the information about Nazi evils belongs to humanity. But when UBS was informed that my committee may potentially hold a hearing, the previous cooperation that we got from UBS was scaled back.
Mr. Barofsky testified this to the committee:
Shortly after I told UBS that this committee was considering holding this hearing, UBS informed me that it would for the first time conduct a privileged review and withhold certain relevant privileged material from me and my team.
This is from Mr. Barofsky, the chief investigator of the information that we are trying to get from UBS.
According to Mr. Barofsky, UBS leadership provided misleading information to the committee even after being warned that they were misleading the Judiciary Committee.
For example, at the hearing, UBS testified that it had withheld fewer than 150 documents from Mr. Barofsky.
But Mr. Barofsky said his team emailed UBS before our hearing, ``expressing concern that using the word `document' was misleading.''
Mr. Barofsky said, in this instance, the word ``document'' actually meant ``hundreds or even thousands of pages of many different documents together.''
Following the hearing, Mr. Barofsky told the committee that he urged UBS to ``correct any misimpression it may have made upon the Committee when it referenced the number of withheld and redacted documents as being only 150.'' And according to Barofsky, these documents are ``relevant to the question of whether a Nazi had an account or didn't have an account with Credit Suisse.''
To date, UBS hasn't provided a true account of the amount of pages at issue. However, Mr. Barofsky informed the committee that, as of March 11, 2026, approximately 23,000 pages of materials had been redacted or withheld from him.
UBS also took legal action against the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Last week, thank God, a Federal court in New York issued a ruling against UBS's efforts. However, if the bank were successful in that court case, it could have blocked the Simon Wiesenthal Center from fully speaking on all Holocaust issues--very much a violation of First Amendment rights of freedom of speech.
Following the committee hearing, UBS failed to fully and completely respond to all questions for the record submitted by members of the Judiciary Committee.
Now, I am going to talk about a Mr. Karofsky, different than Mr. Barofsky. Mr. Karofsky is president of UBS Americas. He literally failed to answer any questions posed directly to him. His disrespect for the committee is noted.
So be on notice, Mr. Karofsky.
So I kept the hearing record open, and this week, I have sent additional questions for the record to the bank, UBS, and to others. Mr. Barofsky, as opposed to Mr. Karofsky, has since provided supplemental responses.
He has informed the committee that UBS has refused to investigate credible leads on Nazis and their facilitators, looting of Jewish assets, and facilitation of ratlines. He has also told the committee that UBS has imposed an arbitrary July 31, 2026, deadline for completing this investigative work.
Certainly, as I am an investigator, I understand timelines and deadlines. But I also know that you can't enforce deadlines at the expense of quality of the investigation.
UBS has taken the position that it, in and of itself, will decide what they are going to do to cooperate after the current investigation concludes, whether to investigate remaining leads.
Now, this Senator was born at night, but not last night. UBS needs to quit playing games and get the job done right away. UBS has spent millions of dollars on investigative work. Why not investigate these Nazi evils right now? What are they trying to hide? UBS's current position will unnecessarily create a cloud of doubt over the final report of investigation.
As I said in March, I plan to call a followup hearing before the end of this year. My goal is that this hearing will bring closure to the investigation in a way that brings justice to the Jewish community and the victims of the Holocaust.
UBS's conduct is interfering with that ultimate goal. And given their recent national chartered bank approval by the U.S. Government, UBS has a heightened responsibility to be fully forthcoming on this matter.
I urge them to get back on the right side, where they once were, because it looked like we had very faithful and dedicated communication by the bank to our investigation. And why all this impeding of further investigation, I don't understand.
I encourage Mr. Barofsky and the Simon Wiesenthal Center to keep my investigative team updated on all ongoing matters, whether it is good or whether it is bad. This Senator's efforts to expose Nazi evils will not stop.
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