François Genoud

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François Genoud (1915 – May 30, 1996) was a noted Swiss financier, benefactor of the Nazi diaspora and supporter of Islamic militancy.

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[edit] Synopsis

Among other things, Genoud is notable for being the executor of last will and testament of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, and for reportedly making a fortune from publishing his diaries; later he would attain an equal measure of notoriety for bankrolling the legal defenses of Adolf Eichmann and Klaus Barbie. Nazi hunters such as Serge Klarsfeld and Simon Wiesenthal, journalist David Lee Preston and others have asserted that his role as a benefactor for surviving National Socialist interests goes much deeper, offering evidence that Genoud was no less than the principal financial manager of the hidden Swiss assets of the Third Reich after WW II,[1] and would use his banking contacts to set in motion networks that later became known as ODESSA, which sponsored evacuation of key Nazi leaders into Morocco, Spain and Latin America.

In 1958 he founded the Arab Commercial Bank, which would be active in lending money to Arab nationalist groups and as the chief repository for the Algerian National Liberation Front,[2] in Geneva in 1958, and in 1962 was named Director of the Arab People's Bank in Algiers.[3] He is also believed by Swiss authorities to have been the founder of Lugano-based al Taqwa Bank, which was shut down in 2002 for reputed status as a funding conduit for al Qaeda and Hamas.

Genoud also financed the legal defense of Carlos the Jackal after his 1994 arrest, and was a firm supporter of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in cooperation with radical lawyer Jacques Verges; he also bankrolled Ayatollah Khomeini's exile in France when Iran was governed by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. When Genoud himself faced legal troubles in 1983, he was represented by Baudoin Dunant, a leading Geneva-based lawyer who sits on the board of over 20 companies, including the Saudi Investment Company, the overseas arm of the Saudi Binladin Group.[4]

[edit] Death

Genoud committed suicide, with the help of a Swiss pro-euthanasia group Exit, according to his family, at age 81 on May 30, 1996[5] shortly after Jewish leaders and Swiss banking officials announced an unprecedented agreement to set up a commission to examine secret bank and government files to search for funds deposited in Switzerland by Holocaust victims.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ David Lee Preston (Jan. 5, 1997). Hitler's Swiss Connection. Philadelphia Inquirer.
  2. ^ Secrecy is Golden. Time Magazine (November 27,1964).
  3. ^ Alms for Jihad, p. 62
  4. ^ PBS Frontline special on the bin Laden family
  5. ^ Francois Genoud, Nazi Sympathizer, 81. Associated Press (June 3, 1996).
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