Swiss banks reveal secret accounts dormant for 70 years

Swiss banks have published a list of the holders of dormant accounts that have not been used since 1956 in an attempt to find their heirs, al-Eqtisadiah daily reported.

It has become mandatory for banks to do this since the passing of new regulations in 2015 that addressed the issue of dormant accounts. The list recently released is the first one published this year and the second since 2015.

The accounts on the list have at least 500 Swiss francs ($526) each and have remained unclaimed for at least 60 years now.

Al-Eqtisadiah received a copy of the list that included the names, birth places and nationalities of around 300 account holders. The total number of their assets is 8 million Swiss francs.

According to the Swiss Bankers Association, around 5 percent of those who have the legal right to claim these dormant accounts have been found ever since publishing the first list in 2015.

Anyone can check if their relatives have a dormant account at Swiss banks by logging on to the website and providing available information on the account holder such as name, birth date or nationality.

The bank will publish such lists every year. In 2017, they will publish a list of card holders who haven’t claimed their accounts since 1957 while in 2018 they will publish a list of those who haven’t used their accounts since 1958 and so on.

A version of this article is avaliable in Arabic at AlArabiya.Net.