Swiss banks name holders of dormant accounts worth 7 CHF Million

The Swiss Bankers Association announced in a statement the next list of accounts hold assets of about eight million Swiss francs (€7.4 million). The first step was in December 2015, when the association published a list of more than 2,600 accounts of individuals or companies without any movements on their Swiss bank accounts for the past 60 years.
   
The Swiss Bankers Association recommended that people who think they are entitled to the dormant accounts make requests via the website www.dormantaccounts.ch, which will be forwarded to the relevant bank.
   
"The banks today published further names for which it has not been possible to establish contact since 1956," the association said in a statement. Now, it starts one year for customers to come forward before banks must hand the assets over to the Swiss state. For dormant accounts longer than 60 years, claimants have five years. If no one steps forward to claim an account, its contents will be transferred to the Swiss government.
   
In total, the list includes some 4,000 accounts holding tens of millions of Swiss francs and dozens of safety deposit boxes. Since the website was launched last December, Swiss banks have found heirs for about 5% of the accounts listed on the site, the banker association said.
   
The vast majority of the accounts concern Swiss nationals who lived in Switzerland, but the list also includes American, Italians, Germans and French citizens.
      
Switzerland has previously published lists of dormant accounts, but only those with a direct link to victims of the Holocaust.
Accounts in Switzerland are considered dormant after a decade without contact from a client, though only accounts that have been inactive for six decades or more will be published online each year.