Axa compensates genocide descendents

Monday, January 7, 2008
By Julien Le Bot / FRANCE 24

Thousands of people of Armenian descent may make claims under a life insurance policy signed before World War I. The Axa insurance company has conceded to global compensation of 17.5 million US dollars.

Axa is legally responsible for contracts signed with the Union-Vie insurance company before World War I, over 90 years ago. Axa has been therefore obligated to honour its engagements and pay compensation to the descendants of Armenians who had signed insurance policies and were killed in the genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1916.

“Money is not the essential issue here,” Alexis Govciyan, chairman of the Coordination Council of Armenian Organisations of France and president of the Armenian General Benevolent Union of Europe, told FRANCE 24. “The compensation is symbolic, since it amounts to about 2,000 dollars per family. We are proud of the work accomplished by our lawyers.”

As many as 1.5 million Armenians were killed from 1915 to 1916 in the Ottoman Empire during what is considered as the first genocide of the 20th century. Their descendants have had difficulties obtaining compensation.

January 7, 2008 marks a step toward recognition. Descendants of the victims who signed an insurance policy will be able to claim compensation. The insurance has remained unpaid until today.

Following a 2005 decision in a class action suit in the USA, three American lawyers are seeking to find inheritors of Armenians who were insured by Union-Vie, a defunct French company acquired by Axa in 1996.

The Armenian genocide remains a controversial political and diplomatic issue, since the Turks refuse to use the term “genocide”, instead referring to the incident as a reprisal. The matter of indemnities, therefore, is symbolically important.

Axa is not alone

“Of the 7,000 files relevant to the case,” explains Govciyan, “just over one thousand applications have been sent in. A third of the claimants live in France, a third in Armenia and the remaining third are part of the worldwide diaspora.”

The Union-Vie life insurance claims by genocide victims are not unique. On the other side of the Atlantic, Vartkes Yeghiayan, a Californian of Armenian descent who is one of the lawyers working on the Axa case, negotiated 20 million US dollars in reparations from New York Life in January 2004, resolving 2,000 Armenian claims. To achieve this goal, he did research all over Europe and found about 30 descendants of policy holders.

The Union-Vie company has never concealed the fact that at the end of the World War I they had more than 10,000 Armenian insurance holders. The matter was put aside, but about 30 years later, they began to take responsibility for these outstanding policies.

Lawyers representing the descendants of the genocide victims used California laws to bring the Axa case to a Los Angeles court. In October 2005, an agreement was reached.

Axa agreed to pay a lump sum of 17.5 million US dollars. The descendants were to split 11 million dollars; 3 million dollars went to humanitarian organizations (the Armenian General Benevolent Union, the Blue Cross and the French-Armenian Fund); and the rest went to the lawyers.

For Axa, the matter is closed. “The money has been returned to the descendants. We have no comment on the ruling,” said an Axa spokesperson.

According to Govciyan, Deutsche Bank is the next in line to be approached on the matter of indemnities.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

US-Armenian legal team to meet with German officials over Armenian genocide compensation claims

May 7,2007
IRNA

A group of US-Armenian lawyers are scheduled to meet with German officials on Thursday in Berlin where they are to hold talks with German officials on a lawsuit which charges two major German banks - Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank - of preventing the recovery of millions in money and assets deposited by Armenians prior to World War I and the Armenian Genocide, DPA reported Monday.

The US-Armenian legal team is due to discuss the high profile case with the director of the international law department of the German foreign ministry, Goetz Schmidt-Bremme.

The lawsuit also claims that the banks accepted "looted assets" taken by the Ottoman Turkey government during World War I and the Armenian genocide.

The lawyers are also hoping to meet with representatives of Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank.

Both Germans banks have yet to agree to attend Thursday talks between the legal team and the German foreign ministry.

According to a class action suit filed at a US court, it is estimated that the banks took more than $22.5 million in looted assets based on the value of US dollars in 1915.

Germany's parliament passed a resolution in 2005 urging Turkey to face up to its role in the Armenian massacre but fell short of labeling it a genocide.

The motion also stressed that Germany was saddened by the role it played in the massacres of 1915 as then-imperial Germany was allied to the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.

German legislators called on the German government to contribute to efforts to have Turkey and its parliament face up to its history promoting the setting up of a joint committee of Turkish and Armenian historians, the opening of Turkish archives and normalizing relations between Ankara and Yerevan.

Armenia says up to 1.5 million of its people were brutally slaughtered between 1915 and 1917 as the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of modern Turkey, was falling apart.

Turkey counters that 300,000 Armenians and thousands of Turks were killed in "civil strife" during World War I when the Armenians rose against their Ottoman rulers and sided with invading Russian troops.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

Turkey Interferes in Lawsuit Against German Banks on Genocide Assets

29 March 2007
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier

Defying all acceptable legal norms, Turkey's ambassador to the U.S., Nabi Sensoy, recently sent a highly inappropriate letter to U.S. District Judge Margaret M. Morrow (Federal Court), asking her to dismiss a lawsuit by Armenian plaintiffs against the German Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank. A copy of this previously undisclosed letter was obtained by this writer.

In a class action lawsuit, filed by Yeghiayan & Associates; Kabateck, Brown, Kellner, and Geragos & Geragos, Armenian plaintiffs had accused the two German banks of concealing and preventing the recovery of assets which were deposited by Armenians in these banks "prior to World War I and the Armenian Genocide." The plaintiffs had further alleged that the banks "accepted looted assets, forcibly taken by the government of the Ottoman Turkey during World War I and the Armenian Genocide."

Ever since the filing of this lawsuit in 2004 (amended in 2006), these German banks have done everything possible to have it dismissed. They have challenged the constitutionality of the law passed by the California Legislature which extended the Statute of Limitations and created standing for plaintiffs to sue the German banks and other institutions until 2016. In their attempt to counter the charge that they are the beneficiaries of ill-gotten gains, the German banks, through their legal counsel, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, have claimed that the California law "is an unconstitutional encroachment on the federal government's exclusive power over foreign affairs."

It now appears that in order to back up their claim, the German banks have succeeded in getting Turkey to instruct its ambassador to the U.S. to send a letter to the Judge Morrow telling her that the District Court is interfering in a matter involving U.S.-Turkish relations. This modern-day German-Turkish collaboration reminds one of the alliance forged some 90 years ago between the German and Turkish governments during the Armenian Genocide. By reviving this unholy union, the German banks hope to keep their "loot," while the Turkish government can continue to cover up the genocide and attempt to preempt any future claims against Turkey itself.
However, the German banks and the Turkish government apparently were oblivious to the fact that by writing a letter directly to the Federal Judge, the Turkish ambassador was interfering in a judicial process to which the Turkish side is not a legal party.

It is noteworthy that the Turkish Ambassador’s letter, dated February 23, 2007, came on the heels of Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul’s latest visit to Washington, leading one to speculate that the Ambassador may have been pressured into this improper act by his political superiors, possibly against the advice of his American attorneys. It is noteworthy that, during the court hearing on February 27, 2007, the German banks' attorney disclosed that David Saltzman, the attorney for the Turkish Embassy, had been in close communication with him for several years since the lawsuit was first filed.

In his letter to Judge Morrow, Amb. Sensoy wrote: "I am deeply concerned that the plaintiffs have asked you to sit in judgment on Turkey’s sovereign acts carried out within its territory, from which I would request that you refrain. Specifically, the plaintiffs have made allegations that require this court to delve into whether there was a governmental plan to commit crimes against Armenians living in the late Ottoman Empire, including the looting of property. The plaintiffs have made clear that they wish their allegations to span the demise of the Ottoman Empire and carry over into modern Turkey. For example, the plaintiffs allege that the Armenian tragedy extended from 1915 to 1923, insinuating that any wrongful acts that contributed to it are not only the responsibility of the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor state, but also its successor, Republic of Turkey, which was founded in 1923."

The Turkish ambassador then unabashedly offered the Judge his embassy’s services as an unimpeachable source for documentation on the Armenian Genocide! "My embassy places itself at your disposal to provide references to scholarly works that disagree with the current orthodoxy that the Armenian tragedy ought to be termed genocide," the letter said.

Amb. Sensoy then chastised Judge Morrow by instructing her that her "use of the term ‘Armenian Genocide,’ is inappropriate." He said he was unhappy that in her September 11 opinion, the Judge had made a reference to the "Historical Background of the Armenian Genocide." He also accused the Judge of "being an advocate of one side in a genuine historic controversy…."

In response to this unwarranted intrusion into the affairs of the court, the attorneys for the Armenian side -- the plaintiffs -- filed an affidavit with the court on March 7, 2007, that stated: "The letter from the Turkish Ambassador is replete with inaccuracies and erroneous suppositions…. The Republic of Turkey is not a party to this lawsuit, nor has it appeared in any capacity in such a way to allow it any voice in this process…. There is no legal justification for this Court to consider any position presented by the Republic of Turkey in this case. Accordingly, Plaintiffs recommend that the Court disregard the Turkish Ambassador’s letter."
On the other hand, the attorneys for the German banks -- the defendants – claimed in their affidavit that the Turkish ambassador’s letter was "relevant evidence." Not surprisingly, the defendants used that letter to buttress their allegation that the lawsuit could have to "negative implications" on U.S. relations with Turkey. They claimed that the Turkish ambassador’s letter demonstrates that the court’s consideration of “the degree of Turkey’s culpability for its treatment of Armenians during the WWI period implicate[s] sensitive foreign policy concerns between the United States and Turkey even to this date."

While the Turkish government's intent in sending such a letter to the Judge may have been to defend its interests, it may actually result in the following unintended and detrimental consequences for Turkey:

1) The Ambassador’s unwarranted interference in the affairs of a U.S. Federal Court could result in the Judge not only rejecting his unsolicited intervention but also negatively disposing her towards the German banks for their possible role in orchestrating that letter;

2) Should the judge reject the letter, her ruling would imply that a straightforward case of seeking the return of Armenian assets held by German banks, would become, as the Turkish ambassador himself stated, a legal case with far reaching consequences for the Turkish side, including the reaffirmation of the Armenian Genocide by a U.S. Federal Court and holding today’s Republic of Turkey responsible for the losses suffered by genocide victims.

Once again, by its emotional over-reaction to all issues dealing with the Armenian Genocide, the Turkish government may have shot itself in the foot!