Various Swiss banking scandals have brought to the surface the tip of the iceberg of long-standing post-WW2 links between the 3 big Swiss banks and the American intelligence community.  Some of these links - notably that with the Union Bank of Switzerland - seem to have their origins in the U.S. exploitation of the cavalier treatment of Jewish pre-WW2 deposits.  The outgrowth of these cancers is manifest in the BCCI affair (over-lapping directorship of Dr.Alfred Hartmann), in the SASEA affair and in the Shakarchi affair which was not only admitted, by the U.S. Embassy in Berne, as a CIA affair, but even brought down Switzerland's Minister of Justice Elisabeth Kopp.  Another CIA link was amply documented in the case of Colonel North and other U.S. officials operating through the Credit Swiss which was found to have been blackmailed by the intelligence community since the fourties.

Rappaport is linked to BCCI and the secret world of Swiss banking. Rappaport put Alfred Hartmann, chief of BCCI's secretly owned Swiss subsidiary, Banque de Commerce et Placements, on the board of his Intermaritime Bank of Geneva and New York. Hartmann was also chair of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro's Swiss bank, Lavoro A.G., and a senior official at the Rothschild Bank A.G. See The BCCI Affair: A Report, Vol 1, pp. 407-08; Profits of War, pp. 172, 181; and Peter Gumbel, "A Swiss Bank [Rothschild] Squirms As Officer It's Suing Tells of Sleazy Deals," Wall Street Journal, December 11, 1992, p. A1.

SWITZERLAND : ROTSCHILD BANK IN DIFFICULTY Banker Alfred Hartmann was obliged last year to quit as president of the Lavoro Bank (Swiss branch of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro) and last February as president of the Banque de Commerce et de Placement, Swiss branch of the BCCI (I. [Total = 147 words].

See also: Rotschild, Soros Quantum Fund, BCCI, etc.