Swiss Believe U.S. Officials Already Have Data Requested on 2 Accounts

Swiss authorities expressed puzzlement Wednesday over why U.S. authorities have asked them for information about two numbered bank accounts believed used in the Iran- contras scandal. And, one official said, “we’re still waiting” for evidence from the United States that a crime was committed, as Swiss law requires before information can be released about the accounts.

As viewed from here, U.S. government officials control two Swiss bank accounts and money that has passed through those accounts, yet the U.S. government says it has no knowledge of those transactions. Money from the secret sales of arms to Iran by the American government is believed to have been deposited in the accounts, then rerouted to the contras to help fund their war against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.

“You can’t blame us if we are astounded by a situation where Americans sitting in the basement of the White House open bank accounts in Switzerland, wheel and deal in them and then we are asked by the American government to open up the records--records that should be at their own disposal,” one official said.

Cat and Mouse Operation

“Some key Swiss officials believe that the American government knows a lot more about these bank accounts than they have let on to us,” another official here said. “But it must suit their purpose to pretend that they must get the information from us.”

Some observers here suggest that both governments are engaged in a cat and mouse operation, that the Americans know more than they are letting on and that Swiss intelligence, which monitors the movement of large amounts of money in and out of Swiss banks, is in the same position.

Some details of the mystery surrounding the bank accounts--through which millions of dollars is thought to have changed hands--is beginning to be unraveled, thread by thread, however.

A well-placed source in the Swiss government said Wednesday that an Iranian-American arms dealer named Albert A. Hakim, who lives in California, shared a bank account here with Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North and Richard V. Secord, a retired Air Force major general.

Dismissed by Reagan

North is the staff member dismissed from the National Security Council staff by President Reagan for his part in the scandal. Secord is a former assistant deputy secretary of defense who has connections in Iran and with the contras.

The U.S. Department of Justice has asked Swiss authorities to freeze the two bank accounts and to provide records from them. But the Swiss authorities, because of their stringent bank secrecy laws, have asked the Americans to provide additional evidence that laws were broken in connection with the accounts.

Under the International Mutual Assistance Act of 1983 the Swiss may disclose information about secret bank accounts but only if another country can show that the laws of that country and those of Switzerland were violated.

“So far, the American government hasn’t done that,” an official of the Swiss Justice Ministry said Wednesday in Bern, the Swiss capital.

Thorough Documentation

In previous instances, U.S. officials have provided thorough documentation when they have asked the Swiss for information about secret bank accounts. But on this occasion, a Swiss official said Wednesday: “The Americans have talked about fraud but they have not explained just what they mean by fraud.”

Both accounts are carried with the Swiss Credit Bank in Geneva, and one of them is said to be in the name of Lake Resources Inc. The Swiss Credit Bank has taken the unusual step of naming two persons identified with this corporation as North and Secord. And on Wednesday, Hakim, the Iranian, was identified as one of those having access to the account.

No names have been made public in connection with the other account.

The Lake Resources account is believed to be the one to which Texas industrialist H. Ross Perot transferred $2 million, at the request of North, in the hope of ransoming American hostages in Lebanon.

Unanswered Questions

But the questions of who managed the two accounts and exactly where and how the money from them was distributed remain unanswered.

One of the primary functions of Swiss banks is to transfer funds from one person, corporation or country to another. The Swiss believe that a person has the right to conduct his business in privacy, without interference by authorities. This is the basis of Switzerland’s bank secrecy laws.

To assist in money transactions Switzerland has a network of fiduciaries, usually small companies set up under the direction of Swiss lawyers who in many cases are no more than figureheads.

A fiduciary may act on behalf of a client in another country on the basis of a simple telephone call. He may transfer any amount of money out of a Swiss bank at the client’s direction.

Swiss banks themselves will not transfer money based on a phone call. A written request is required. This takes time, and sometimes clients do not wish to have a written record of such transactions.

Swiss Fiduciary Named

One fiduciary in Geneva is called Compagnie de Services Fiduciaires. Its Swiss chairman is a respected 70-year-old lawyer named Jean de Senarclens, but the man in charge is thought to be Willard Zucker, an American lawyer.

The London Times has reported that CSF received $18 million in profits from the Iranian arms transaction.

CSF officials refuse to confirm this or to divulge any of their business dealings. Zucker has not been available for comment. Secretaries said he is traveling. De Senarclens has told reporters he knows Albert Hakim but has never met Secord and that he does not know much about the company’s business.

The CSF offices are in a nondescript two-story building away from downtown Geneva. Several other fiduciaries have the same address, among them the Stanford Trading Corp., which also lists De Senarclens as its chairman.

Virginia Trading Firm

In Virginia, there is a Stanford Technology Trading Corp., which was formed by Secord and Hakim. In Bermuda, there is a CSF Fiduciary Co., which has been identified as the purchaser of an aircraft, in the United States, of a type often used in counterinsurgency operations--as in Central America.

“There seems to be a whole network of these fiduciaries,” an investigator in Geneva said.

Over the years the Central Intelligence Agency is known to have used fiduciaries in Switzerland, as well as numbered bank accounts, to channel funds to “cutouts,” or “straw companies.” Such use of fiduciaries is entirely legal in Switzerland.