US attorney Ed Fagan said on Sunday he planned to initiate a class action lawsuit in the US against Switzerland’s two biggest banks and a US bank on behalf of victims of South Africa’s former apartheid regime.
Confirming a report in the Swiss SonntagsZeitung newspaper, Fagan, who played a key role in compensation claims against Swiss banks by Holocaust survivors, will present the law suit at a court in Manhattan on Monday.
“Three defendants are being named tomorrow,” he told AFP.
He declined to specify the amount being sought in reparations from UBS, Credit Suisse and Citibank, but the Swiss newspaper reported that the two Swiss banks faced a demand for 80-billion Swiss francs ($51,3-billion, 54-billion euros).
“I never speak numbers,” Fagan said, adding the main allegation concerned profiteering during the apartheid regime.
More details would be released at simultaneous press conferences in Zurich and Soweto on Monday, he said.
Further class action lawsuits are planned in the United States against other US and European based financial institutions and companies, Fagan confirmed.
The current lawsuit involved six lead plaintiffs, he added, saying however that “there’s more coming”.
Fagan is being supported by South African human rights lawyer Dumisa Ntsebeza, who will lead the international team in the fight for reparations, said a press release issued through Fagan’s partner in Switzerland, Norbert Gschwend, of Gloria Multiconsulting.
“The regime would never have survived so long if it had not gone on being supported after 1985 by firms whose only goal was profit,” Ntsebeza said in an interview with the SonntagsZeitung.
The newspaper added that a call centre would open in South Africa on Monday to enable further possible plaintiffs to join the class action.
“The targets are the private US and European based multi-national industries that profiteered from their business dealing in South Africa during the period from 1948 to 1993,” the release said.
They included banks, financial institutions, computer, oil, automotive and weapons companies and other firms that provided “the money, technology, systems, equipment, know-how and advice that made Apartheid possible”, it added.
It said that the claims were being made in the US under laws that permit non-US citizens to file human rights and torture victims’ claims in US courts against companies that do business in the United States.
Fagan, as well as victim family plaintiffs, will attend the Zurich press conference.
UBS representative Vesna Carter said the bank had as yet no knowledge of the class action, and added: “We are convinced there is no basis” for such a suit.
Credit Suisse representative Claudia Kraaz commented: “While we have received no notice of any suit, attaching responsibility to Credit Suisse Group for the injustices of the apartheid regime would obviously not only be preposterous, but unsubstantiated by the facts.”
“Credit Suisse Group operated at all times according to all applicable laws and the Swiss government’s regulations for doing business with South Africa,” she added.
Switzerland, which is due to join the United Nations in the coming months, did not take part in the UN sanctions regime against apartheid, except for the embargo on arms sales.
Fagan played a key role in the agreement of a $1,25-billion settlement in 1998 in the United States by Jewish groups, Holocaust victims and their heirs who tried to recover bank accounts hoarded by Swiss banks after World War II.
Apartheid in South Africa officially ended in 1994, with a democratic election that brought Nelson Mandela, jailed for decades under the racist regime, to power as president. He has since been succeeded by Thabo Mbeki. – AFP