Ronald Lauder.
Photographer: Dana Golan/Bloomberg. Background Photography Source: Christian Boltanski/Crown Point Press.
A Billionaire’s Quest to Find Credit Suisse Nazi Accounts Puts UBS in the Spotlight
Ronald Lauder has led a push to reopen investigations after he helped reach a $1.25 billion settlement in the 1990s. He thinks that deal left billions on the table.
Ronald Lauder was a key player in a 1998 settlement that saw Swiss banks pay $1.25 billion for their handling of Holocaust victims’ accounts. But he came away from the landmark deal convinced the banks owed far more.
“We probably left $5 to $ 10 billion on the table,” the billionaire president of the World Jewish Congress said in an interview in his Fifth Avenue office, where blurry black-and-white pictures of Holocaust victims cover an entire wall. “I said to myself, ‘We’re not going to make that mistake again.’”