Germany Still After Jewish Wealth

Nazi efforts to confiscate Jewish property abroad
Ex-HSBC Thug in Cahoots With Berlin Regime
This is a follow-up article of the posting on 27 December 2009

In the week when the civilised part of the world commemorated the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, the Berlin regime decided it was the appropriate time to match the mountains of hair, spectacles and gold teeth ripped from Nazi victims in the 1940s with going after Jewish funds deposited in Swiss banks, estimated at $16 billion. Like their Nazi forefathers, today's German regime seeks help from clandestine sources and criminals to gain access to, or knowledge of these deposits, and offers a $3.5 million bribe to an ex-employee of  HSBC Private Bank in Geneva.

Chief architects of Jewish persecution: a German chancellor flanked by Bundesbank Chief Schacht

Personally known to me, 'Antoine' is now known as Herve Falciani, and has subsequently been exposed as a French secret service mole placed at HSBC-PB in the 1990s. The affair has already soured the diplomatic relations between the wealthy banking centre Switzerland and the cash-strapped, near bankrupt post-Vichy French Republic. The new revelations of Berlin's involvement in the affair, purportedly concocted between former French president Chirac and former German Reichskanzler Schroeder, threaten the diplomatic ties between Bern and Berlin now as well.

The ruse of the Paris-Berlin axis powers is to claim that Jewish funds in Switzerland are illicit and constitute tax evasion. The arrogance of this claim is impertinent indeed, as the two former fascist states try to re-define the legality and origins of funds through hearsay and prejudice and assume the right to circumvent Swiss laws and impose Nazi legislation on the Bern government.

The portrayal of 'Antoine' by French authorities today as someone like a Robin Hood is absurd: smuggled into HSBC, the Italian citizen was placed there as a "sleeper" inside the banking giant, kept dormant as he gained seniority as an employee and wider access to banking dataon thousands of customers. In 2005 the "sleeper" was called into action and started his secretive collection of data. The incentive for Antoine was not some idealistic goal to punish the wealthy, but a self-fulfilling scheme to line his own pockets and to satisfy his anti-Semitism as much as those of the French. The potential windfall profit for the needy French taxman of $380 million - the result of the extortion scheme to investors to "pay or go to jail" - justified the means: Antoine was a cheap mole who was paid $1.4 million, provided with a fine residence on the Cote d'Azur and given a new identity.

He might be in for the Iron Cross award now too, as a disk with data of 1,300 predominantly Jewish investors at HSBC Private Bank is up for sale and within reach of Reichskanzler Merkel. Smelling blood and fortune - especially of Jewish origins - has always been a driving motivation for German leaders for ages. The prospect to buy illegally obtained data for merely $3.5 million and in exchange reap up to $500 million in a subsequent "pay or face trial" extortion plot derides the Berlin regime as a banana republic junta.

"Our goal is to get possession of this data," Frau Angela Merkel said at a press conference on yesterday, after debating the issue in her cabinet over the weekend. The regime is now looking at any way to acquire the data, Minister of Interior and State Security Schauble said in a separate briefing. He said the government would pursue the same "line" as in 2007, when a similar acquisition of secret bank data in Liechtenstein was made. The deal proved lucrative for German tax authorities: some $255 million were recovered by the end of last year. As in the past, the Nazis and their successors discount the nature of relations with other countries in pursuit of Jewish wealth.

The Swiss authorities, on firm moral grounds, reacted quickly, saying that there would be no co-operation in any investigation based on stolen data. Political parties across the board slammed the move as "dealing with stolen goods." The past success of investors to save their wealth from hostile regimes and tax regimes should not be impaired by Berlin's shadowy dealings with criminals today.

Swiss Liberals said the pressing need for budget revenues could not justify abandoning the rule of law, while Christian-Democrat Pirmin Bischof compared it to a "modern form of bank robbery." "We expect Germany not to buy this data, but to arrest the criminals who broke the law in Switzerland and to return the data," Thomas Sutter from the Swiss banking association told German TV channel ZDF.


German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle called on the neighbouring state to co-operate in fighting tax evasion. Himself a Liberal, he tried to strike a more cautious tone, however, stressing the need for all privacy and legal issues to be respected before buying it. Even within Merkel's Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, politicians expressed doubt about the move. Bavaria's interior minister Herrmann told that acquisition of such data can only be justified in serious cases, such as murder.