A U.S. Jewish group Friday praised the night watchman who rescued bank documents from the shredder at Switzerland's biggest bank that could shed light on Nazi-era financial transactions.
Abraham Foxman, national director of the New York-based Anti-Defamation League, said the group had set up $36,000 fund to aid the watchman with any legal problems resulting from his actions.Swiss law provides for fines or jail sentences for people who disclose banking secrets.
Christoph Meili said he found the documents in two containers waiting to be shredded at the Union Bank of Switzerland headquarters.
He turned them over to the Hebrew Congregation of Zurich, which gave them to police. Zurich District Attorney Peter Cosandey described the documents as "politically sensitive."
Union Bank of Switzerland officials said the documents concerned bank meetings and loans, not customer accounts, and were unrelated to allegations that Switzerland colluded with Hitler's Germany, siphoned off Jewish assets and laundered Nazi gold.
But representatives of the Zurich Jewish congregation said the documents included information on loans to German clients, including mortgages in Berlin during the Nazi era.
Foxman said he was "disappointed" by the Swiss reaction. "I am concerned that there was no outrage in the banks or elsewhere," he said.
He said Meili acted heroically "to save the honor of Switzerland" and called on Swiss citizens, especially ex-bank employees, to come forward if they knew of similar incidents.
Meili has been suspended from his job at the Wache AG security firm, where he had worked for 18 months as a security guard at the bank's headquarters.
U.S. Sen. Alphonse D'Amato has asked Meili to help in a U.S. congressional investigation of Swiss banks and Jewish assets.
The bank suspended its chief archivist Tuesday, saying he threw the documents away as unimportant last week in violation of bans imposed by the Swiss government and the bank to protect investigations.