The US lawyer seeking massive compensation from foreign investors for victims of South African apartheid, has written to at least 27 banks and corporations proposing settlement talks.
”You are receiving this letter because our research has identified your company as one that provided funding and/or support for apartheid,” lawyer Ed Fagan said in the letter, a copy of which was sent to Reuters on Wednesday.
”We trust you…will recognise the legal and moral legitimacy of these claims and the need to address them immediately and without the need for litigation,” he said.
But a top Swiss banker dismissed fears the lawsuit could spiral into a scandal as damaging as the Holocaust claims.
Urs Roth, chief executive of the Swiss Bankers’ Association, said unlike the Holocaust case where clients lost savings in Swiss accounts, Swiss banks could not be held responsible for the former South African government’s discriminatory policies.
Fagan said his letter was sent to six banks including Barclays, NatWest, Standard Chartered and Morgan Guaranty.
It was also sent to five computer firms including ICL and Honeywell; electronics firm Westinghouse; weapons maker Oerlikon Buhrle; and oil companies Caltex, Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil.
He said it also went to several mining companies, which he declined to name.
Fagan has already filed a class action case against Swiss banks UBS and Credit Suisse, US-based Citigroup, German banks Deutsche, Commerzbank and Dresdner and against the IBM computer company.
HOLOCAUST CLAIMS
The first court hearing is scheduled for August 9 in New York, where a judge will begin to assess the magnitude of the case, which Fagan says should run for two to five years.
He told Reuters recently he had not claimed a specific amount on behalf of people killed, abducted and tortured under apartheid, but said the $100-billion paid out to victims of Germany’s Nazis should serve as a guideline.
Fagan made his name with a successful claim against Swiss banks that held onto the deposits of Jews killed in the Nazi Holocaust.
”Apartheid victims deserve the same justice as was shown to Holocaust victims,” he said in the letter sent on behalf also of his South African legal team and their Apartheid Claims Taskforce.
”In fact, the circumstances and undeniable facts related to claims of apartheid victims cry out even more so for such urgent and immediate attention.”
Big Swiss banks ended up settling the claims of Holocaust victims for $1,25-billion.
But Roth said the two cases were ”completely different”.
”Swiss business did not discriminate against the population of South Africa. It was the government of South Africa that did that,” he said.
He also questioned the logic of filing the suit in the United States.
”The complaint Ed Fagan filed is not substantiated, there is no reason a court should act on it, and I can’t see why a US court should deal with a class action relating to South Africa.”
Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who headed South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, has given a cautious welcome to the action. The commission recorded more than 20 000 human rights abuses under apartheid.
More than 2 000 people have already called a toll-free hotline to report cases of apartheid abuse and join the class action case. – Reuters