www.reuters.com - Tuesday 23 May 2000, 4:22 pm Eastern Time

WJC wants Dutch banks, stock markt to face deadline By Joan Gralla NEW YORK, May 23 (Reuters) - The World Jewish Congress on Tuesday raised the heat on Dutch banks and Amsterdam's stock exchange, saying it will ask New York City's top financial officer to tell them they have 30 days to reach an accord on Holocaust restitution or face boycotts. In Amsterdam, the bourse said it had nothing to fear from the threat by Jewish groups, who want to hold Dutch banks and the stock exchange accountable for any profits they made by helping the Nazis plunder Jews. The Dutch Banking Association declined comment. Dutch insurers appeared close to solving a last-minute snag over meeting what the WJC has demanded from them: that they join an international panel investigating whether Europe's insurers robbed Holocaust survivors by failing to honour prewar policies. If the Dutch insurance association's membership goes through, the country's insurers, including giants like Aegon and ING , no longer would be at risk of boycotts or other sanctions. The WJC told Reuters that with Dutch banks and the Amsterdam's stock exchange it will work through New York City Comptroller Alan Hevesi's Holocaust committee, which represents 900 public local financial officials. Hevesi's committee meets on Thursday; in the past, it has heeded the WJC's advice and pushed federal and state regulators not to approve any takeovers of U.S. banks by Swiss and German companies until the foreign firms resolved outstanding Holocaust claims. The Amsterdam bourse is vulnerable to a sanctions threat: it wants to link up with the New York Stock Exchange through Euronext, the new European bourse created by the merger of the Amsterdam, Brussels, and Paris exchanges. Elan Steinberg, WJC executive director, told Reuters, ``After consultation with the Dutch Jewish communities, we will request that the Hevesi committee impose a 30-day deadline in which to reach agreement on Holocaust-related issues.'' He added a Dutch Jewish group estimated that around $205 million, in today's values, was owed for looted securities. Saying the Netherlands' stock exchange had offered to pay $3.31 million as a gesture, Steinberg said: ``This is not about a gesture; this is a about paying back what was stolen.'' A spokesman for the Dutch stock exchange, told Reuters in Amsterdam: ``I cannot believe anyone would point a finger at an organisation founded in 1997 and say 'don't do business with them.''' A Dutch insurance group last week announced that it had joined the International Commission on Holocaust-era Insurance Claims, as the WJC has demanded. But the association added a paragraph incorporating a separate Dutch settlement process to the memorandum of understanding with the commission. All the five insurers that already have joined the Washington, D.C.-based-group - Allianz AG (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: ALVG.F), AXA , Generali , Winterthur , and Zurich Allied - have signed the same MOU. As a result, the commission has asked the industry group to sign the original agreement, after moving the insertion down below their signatures to make it clear this is not part of the MOU, said sources familiar with the issue who declined to be named.