Swiss jeer apartheid lawyer
2002-06-17 18:47
Knut Engelmann
Zurich - A US lawyer who helped force Swiss banks into a $1.25 billion settlement for Nazi victims said on Monday he would file suit against top Swiss and US banks for propping up South Africa's former apartheid regime.
The announcement by Edward Fagan, a maverick lawyer known for his controversial tactics, was made amid high drama.
Fagan said he represented some 80 plaintiffs in South Africa. A telephone hotline had been set up to enable others to join the suits, which were to be filed in the US District Court in Manhattan later on Monday. South African lawyers working with Fagan said they expected thousands more to join.
A jeering, jostling crowd, angry at what they saw as just another attempt to smear Switzerland's good name, forced the media-savvy lawyer to abandon a news conference on Zurich's Paradeplatz, home of Credit Suisse's headquarters and the main Zurich offices of UBS, the country's two biggest banks.
Fagan later told reporters at a central hotel he was seeking as much as $50 billion in reparations in a class action suit against UBS and Credit Suisse as well as US-based Citicorp Inc, which owns Citibank.
He alleges the banks provided funds to the apartheid government between 1985 and 1993, when the regime was running short of cash because of United Nations sanctions. The banks have dismissed the claims as completely unjustified.
"The truth is we just opened a gaping wound," Fagan said. "This is a real claim, this is not just bullshit."
The Swiss banks have said Fagan's claims had no legal basis. "Attaching responsibility would not only be preposterous but unsubstantiated by the facts," a CS spokesperson said on Sunday.
The Swiss government also dismissed the suit. "It's another unjust attack against Switzerland," said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ruedi Christen.
Investors unimpressed
Investors appeared to be similarly unimpressed. UBS shares ended the day up 3.2%, while Credit Suisse rose 2.5% in a generally firmer Swiss market.
Fagan was accompanied by Dorothy Molefi, the mother of Hector Pietersen, a 13-year-old boy who was shot by police during a popular uprising against apartheid in June 1976. The photograph of a man carrying Hector's dead body became a symbol for the fight against South Africa's violent regime.
"Hector had the unfortunate distinction of being a sacrifice in this huge struggle," Fagan said, his arm casually draped around Molefi's shoulders. The mother, choking with tears, said she had never come to grips with her son's killing. "Even today it is not easy," Molefi, one of the lead plaintiffs, whispered.
Fagan alleges the banks arranged large-scale loans to the regime, helping it to buy arms. South Africa's apartheid system institutionalised racial discrimination in almost all areas of life to secure and bolster white supremacy.
"Fagan go home" and "Wash your dirty linens elsewhere" were some of the politer remarks hurled at Fagan by the mostly elderly crowd on the Paradeplatz, incensed by what they saw as an effort to drag Switzerland's image through the mud.
"He's a rascal, a stinking lawyer who's only after the money," said one elderly man. Fagan was jeered and pushed by the crowd until he fled the square in a black Mercedes taxicab.
Forced to retreat to a hotel, Fagan said the protests were outrageous and criticised police for not protecting him better.
Fagan made a name for himself by representing victims of the Nazis and their heirs who sued Swiss banks in the 1990s for their alleged role in financing the Holocaust.
In 1998, Swiss banks settled the case for $1.25 billion. The case triggered massive international pressure on neutral Switzerland to account for its dealings with the Nazi regime.
Human rights suits
The case is filed under a US law that allows non-US citizens to file human rights suits against companies that operate in the United States, which UBS and Credit Suisse do.
Fagan's suit alleges that the banks "profited from the human rights violations and crimes against humanity committed against blacks in South Africa" under apartheid, which ended in 1994 with the country's first all-race elections.
He said he would soon file suits against other unnamed Swiss companies, as well as firms and banks in Germany, France and Britain, which had also supported the apartheid government. Fagan said he would announce further details about this on July 1.
Jubilee South Africa, a lobby group campaigning for reparations, said this was the first of many court actions by those who suffered during apartheid.
"Today marks a turning point. German, British, French and South African banks and businesses will be similarly challenged... in the months to come," it said in a statement.
After his brief appearance in Zurich, Fagan immediately turned his attention to another high-profile and potentially lucrative case, this one in Salzburg in neighbouring Austria.
There, Fagan hopes to win over relatives of the 155 people killed in the Kaprun ski train blaze of November 2000 to file a massive lawsuit for damages in a US court. The criminal trial of 16 people for the Kaprun fire starts in Salzburg on Tuesday.
- Reuters