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SWISS BANK CAUGHT SHREDDING RECORDS DEALING WITH NAZI ERA.


Byline: The New York New York, state, United States
New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of
 Times

Just weeks after the Swiss government ordered its banks to preserve any remaining records of their dealings with Nazi Germany, a suspicious security guard at the Union Bank of Switzerland halted the destruction of documents from the World War II era, including some that appeared to deal with the ``forced auctions'' of property in Berlin in the 1930s.

The bank, one of Switzerland's largest and a focal point focal point
n.
See focus.
 for investigators seeking to trace Jewish assets deposited in Swiss accounts during the war, hastily called a news conference Tuesday in Zurich and said it ``regrets the incident.''

But the bank insisted that none of the documents that were shredded before the action of the 28-year-old guard, who says he took some of the material planned for destruction and handed it to a Swiss Jewish organization, contained information about specific bank clients.

Nonetheless, the destruction of the documents by the bank seems bound to inflame tensions with Switzerland over the sincerity of its efforts to track accounts that date back to the 1930s, especially those of Jews who were later killed by the Nazis.

What began last year as an effort to resolve a historical dispute has grown in recent weeks into an increasingly heated confrontation that has strained the normally placid relations between Washington and the Swiss government.

The turning point came two weeks ago when the president of Switzerland, Jean-Pascal Delamuraz Jean-Pascal Delamuraz (April 1, 1936 in Vevey - October 4, 1998 in Lausanne) was a Swiss politician and member of the Swiss Federal Council (1983-1998).

He obtained a degree in political science in 1960 and became that same year deputy director of the Swiss National
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``This fund would make it much more difficult to establish the truth,'' Delamuraz said. ``Such a fund would be considered an admission of guilt admission of guilt n. a statement by someone accused of a crime that he/she committed the offense. If the admission is made outside court to a police officer it may be introduced as evidence if the defendant was given the proper warnings as to his/her rights .''

His comments raised a storm of protest from Jews, and after standing by Delamuraz for a few days, Swiss officials began hinting that they might back down on their opposition to such a fund.

The disclosure Tuesday about the shredding of documents in Zurich seems likely to complicate the issue for the banks.
COPYRIGHT 1997 Daily News
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 1997, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

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Publication:Daily News (Los Angeles, CA)
Date:Jan 15, 1997
Words:345
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