Swiss Bank Holocaust Settlement

[advocate]

News for Immediate Release
August 28, 2000
ATTORNEYS QUESTION FAIRNESS OF SWISS BANK HOLOCAUST SETTLEMENT

Nestle AG, the well known food and candy conglomerate, announced Monday it would contribute 25 million Swiss francs ($14.6 million) to a settlement between the Swiss banks and Jewish organizations covering Holocaust-related legal claims. Jonathan Levy, an attorney for several Ukrainian organizations is questioning the distribution of those funds. Levy has opposed the virtual exclusion of non-Jewish victims from the Swiss bank settlement. Levy now is concerned that the fifteen Ukrainian former slave laborers he represents, who worked at a Nestle controlled Maggi factory in Nazi Germany will get a fair deal. "The Jewish organizations have been less than keen on sharing their largess with non-Jewish victims," said Levy, "I am worried about my Ukrainian clients being properly compensated."

Levy and California attorney Tom Easton have also been critical of the Swiss bank settlement excluding Serbs. "Serbs were the victims of incredible religious persecution in Nazi controlled Croatia, over a half million were murdered between 1941 and 1945,""say Easton and Levy, who have documents tracing Croatian wartime deposits of gold and other victim loot to the Swiss National Bank. The attorneys have lodged a lawsuit with a San Francisco Federal Court to add the Swiss National Bank as a defendant to an already pending class action against the Vatican bank and a Roman Catholic religious order who stand accused of postwar money laundering of plunder taken from Serb, Jewish, and Gypsy concentration camp victims in Croatia and Bosnia.

For more information see http://www.vaticanbankclaims.com or contact:

Jonathan Levy
Law Offices of Tom Easton and Jonathan Levy
(513) 528-0586