An American claims lawyer who helped to force Swiss banks into a $1.25 billion settlement for Nazi victims had to abandon a news conference because of a hostile crowd.

Edward Fagan had to make his retreat on Monday after announcing to reporters that he would file a multi-billion suit against top Swiss and U.S. banks for propping up South Africa’s former apartheid regime.

But the watching crowd accused the maverick lawyer, known for controversial tactics, of making another attempt to blacken Switzerland’s good name.

Locals jeered and heckled Fagan, telling him “Go home!” and “Wash your dirty linen elsewhere.”

The Swiss government also dismissed the suit. “It’s another unjust attack against Switzerland,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ruedi Christen told Reuters.

Investors appeared to be similarly unimpressed. UBS shares ended the day up 3.2 percent, while Credit Suisse rose 2.5 percent in a generally firmer Swiss market.

Fagan said he represented about 80 plaintiffs in South Africa. A telephone hotline had been set up to enable others to join the suits, which were to be filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan later on Monday. South African lawyers working with Fagan said they expected thousands more to join.

Media-minded Fagan had chosen to hold the news conference on Zurich’s Paradeplatz, home of Credit Suisse’s headquarters and the main Zurich offices of UBS, the country’s two biggest banks.

‘Gaping wound’ Fagan later told reporters at a central hotel he was seeking as much as $50 billion in reparations in a class action suit against UBS and Credit Suisse as well as U.S.-based Citicorp Inc., which owns Citibank.

He alleged the banks provided funds to the apartheid government between 1985 and 1993, when the regime was running short of cash because of United Nations sanctions. The banks have dismissed the claims as completely unjustified.

“The truth is we just opened a gaping wound,” Fagan said. “This is a real claim.”

Karin Rhomberg, spokeswoman for Credit Suisse, told The Associated Press it saw “no grounds” for the lawsuit.

“We are against all forms of racism, but it’s absurd that our group should be held jointly responsible for the wrongs of the apartheid system.”

Another Credit Suisse spokeswoman, Claudia Kraaz, told Reuters: “CS Group operated at all times according to all applicable laws and Swiss government regulations for doing business with South African business.

“A lawsuit filed by U.S. lawyers in U.S. courts would not be the appropriate forum for considering issues related to Swiss companies in South Africa.”

UBS declined to comment on the case.

Dumisa Ntsebeza, a South African lawyer working with Fagan, told SonntagsZeitung that the banks “should be financially answerable for the suffering they caused the black population.”

He argued that the apartheid regime would not have survived so long if it had not been “propped up” after 1985 by firms “whose only motive was profit.”

“Now they should do something to help build the country and aid the victims of apartheid.”

Fagan represented Holocaust victims and their heirs in the 1990s high-profile case against banks that had allegedly made it almost impossible for plaintiffs to recover money deposited for safekeeping as the Nazis swept across Europe.

The banks are said to have demanded lost documents to prove ownership and even death certificates of people killed in Nazi concentration camps.

Reuters, June 17, 2002