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The Swiss bank Julius Baer has to repay former GDR assets that have landed in Swiss accounts.
This was decided by the Swiss Federal Supreme Court after years of litigation, as the bank announced.
It is about assets and interest totaling 150 million francs (almost 140 million euros).
The bank had already made a provision for this in 2019.
According to the bank, the money came from a foreign trade company in the GDR and between 1990 and 1992 ended up in the company's accounts at the Swiss bank Cantrade, which Julius Baer took over in 2005.
Last litigation still pending
The Federal Agency for Unification-related Special Tasks (BvS), the successor to the Treuhandanstalt, which, among other things, takes care of funds that members of the SED regime had put aside after the fall of the Wall, had sued.
The BvS could not be reached on Friday for comment.
The proceedings against Bank Julius Baer were the last pending legal dispute to repatriate the assets of the parties and mass organizations of the former GDR, as the Ministry of Finance announced in May 2019 at the request of the FDP.
The total value of these assets was put at just under two billion euros at the end of 2017.
Between 2008 and 2018, repatriated funds were transferred to the beneficiary countries according to a key that took into account the population at the end of 1991.
By far the largest part flowed into the Free State of Saxony, followed by Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin.
The problematic payments were known when the bank was taken over, said Julius Baer.
The bank will therefore demand it back from the seller.
That was the big bank UBS at the time.
The BvS ceased operations on January 1, 2001.
Since then it has only existed as a legal and property holder.
The Treuhandanstalt had been designated as the fiduciary administrator of the assets of the party and mass organizations.
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