François Genoud (1915 – May 30, 1996) was a noted Swiss financier and a principal benefactor of the Nazi diaspora through the ODESSA network and supporter of Middle Eastern liberation groups during the post-World War II 20th century. He was considered the Swiss financier of the Third Reich.
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Genoud was from Lausanne, Switzerland. He met Adolf Hitler in 1932 as a teenager in a hotel while studying in Bonn.[1]
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 Goebbels' diaries which he held the posthumous rights for along with Hitler and Bormann's works.[2] This enterprise suffered a setback in 1960 when Paula Hitler died without him securing the full rights to the literature works of Adolf Hitler.[3]
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 World War II.[4]
Genoud became a passionate supporter of Arab liberation causes, funding many nationalist and left-wing organisations.[2]
While in Egypt in the 1950s, through contacts in Gamal Abdel Nasser's government,[5] he was introduced to the leaders of the Algerian Liberation Front, which he would eventually finance by 1954 after originally supplying weapons.[2] In 1958 he founded the Arab Commercial Bank, which would be active in lending to Arab nationalist groups and as the chief repository for the Algerian National Liberation Front.[6]
In the 1960s Genoud began supplying arms for Palestinian causes. The Lausanne-based New European Order organisation,[2] met in Barcelona in April 1969 where Palestinian groups received financial support and Genoud placed them in contact with former Nazis who would assist their military training, including pledged support designated for the Palestinian Liberation Organisation.[2] He was a close associate of Dr. George Habash and Jacques Verges, and in September 1969 he contributed finances for the legal expenses of three Palestinians from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine following their attack on an El Al flight in Zurich, where he personally sat at their defense table.[2]
Genoud was a close friend of Otto Skorzeny, Karl Wolff, and Klaus Barbie during the years of the Third Reich.[7]
Genoud financed several legal defenses, including Adolf Eichmann and Klaus Barbie.[8] He financed the defense of Bruno Breguet during the 1970s after a bombing mission in Israel in 1970. The PFLP called for the release of both Breguet and Leila Khalid, part of the Che Guevara Commando Unit of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, together in 1970.[9] Genoud helped Ilich Ramírez Sánchez in 1994,[2][5] after playing a key role in the success of his missions in the previous decades.[10]
He was closely associated with Ali Hassan Salameh, providing him medical care,[2] and he also bankrolled Ayatollah Khomeini's exile in France when Iran was governed by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. He was a mentor of Ahmed Huber.[5]
Throughout the 1970s he financed many left-wing groups with the goal of armed Arab liberation.[2]
He was associated with Noam Chomsky, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean-Paul Sartre, sitting on a committee with them in the 1970s, which resulted in the pardon of Bruno Breguet.[11]
Genoud found himself in legal troubles from time to time, such as in 1983, when 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.[12]
In 1993 a bomb exploded outside his home[1] and by 1996 Jewish and Swiss authorities were still investigating him for his financial activities during the Third Reich.[1]
Genoud said "my views have not changed since I was a young man. Hitler was a great leader, and if he had won the war the world would be a better place today."[1]
In the miniseres Carlos, Genoud is mentioned by Ilich Ramírez Sánchez's character portrayed by Édgar Ramírez. The production has been criticized for downplaying the historical role of Genoud with Sánchez.[10]
Genoud committed suicide, with (according to his family) the help of a Swiss pro-euthanasia group Exit, at age 81 on May 30, 1996.[13]
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