Exposing Swiss bank destruction of records of Holocaust victims.

Christoph Meili - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Christoph Meili (born April 21, 1968[1]) is a Swiss whistleblower.

In early 1997, Meili worked as a night guard at the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS, precursor of UBS AG) in Zurich, Switzerland. He discovered that officials at UBS were destroying documents about orphaned assets, i.e., credit balances of deceased Jewish clients whose heirs' whereabouts were unknown. Destruction of such documents was a violation of Swiss laws.[2]

On January 8, 1997,[3] he took some bank files home. After a telephone conversation, he handed them over to a local Jewish organization, which brought the documents to the police, and eventually to the press, which published the document destruction on January 14, 1997.[4]

The authorities of Zürich opened a judicial investigation against Meili[5] for suspected violation of the Swiss laws on banking secrecy,[6] which is an offense to be prosecuted ex officio in Switzerland.[7] After charges were filed against him, Ed Fagan approached him and convinced him to move to the United States, where he was granted political asylum.[8][9] According to news reports, Christoph Meili and his family are the only Swiss nationals in history ever to have been granted political asylum in the United States.[10] On January 13, 1998, Fagan filed suit on behalf of Meili against UBS, demanding a sum of 2.56 billion U.S. dollars. The settlement between the Swiss banks and the plaintiffs on the order of US $1.25 billion on August 13, 1998 also covered Meili's law suit and thus ended it.[11]

Later in 1998 the investigations of the justice of Zürich against Meili for allegedly breaking the laws on bank secrecy were cancelled,[5] but Meili did not return to his homeland until 2003. His marriage ended as he was divorced at the end of February 2002.[12] In September 2003 he visited his family in Switzerland. In the Swiss newspaper Die Weltwoche, Meili criticized Fagan for having instrumentalized him and for having let him down. He claimed to have never received the US $1 million that he should have gotten[12] according to their agreements after the settlement with the Swiss banks in 1998.[13] According to a report by the Swiss newspaper Facts of March 17, 2005, he had, however, received US $750,000. (The newspaper did not state when this should have occurred.)[14] In April 2004, Fagan again launched a campaign against UBS and apparently again was supported by Meili in his endeavour.[15][16]

Meili studied communication sciences[17] right after his arrival in the United States. After completing his college degree[17] in May 2004[3] he found employment once more in the security sector. On May 14, 2005 he was naturalized as a US citizen.[17] In an interview with the Swiss newspaper Sonntagsblick on October 21, 2006, Meili re-iterated his criticism of Fagan and the Jewish organizations who had once championed him, stating again they had let him down. Meili, who still lives in Southern California, stated in that interview he was working for minimum wages.[18][19]