Thursday, December 2 7:55 AM SGT

California threatens Italy's Generali on unpaid Holocaust claims

California's insurance commissioner on Wednesday threatened to bar Italy's largest insurance company from doing business here unless it complied with a new law and provided names of Holocaust-era policy holders.

"It's obvious to me that you have no intention of complying with the law" which comes into force in April, insurance commissioner Chuck Quakenbush told Christopher Carnicelli, US boss of Assicurazioni Generali of Italy

"That's not what I'd call a real cooperative attitude," he said.

Speaking at hearings convened to make insurers around the world comply with California's new Holocaust Registry Law, Quakenbush threatened to revoke Generali's California licence unless it released the names and details of unpaid Holocaust-era policies.

"I will lower the hammer on you," he said. "On April 6, you will provide us with a list or you are going to leave the state."

The angry exchange came the same day the commissioner announced agreements on Holocaust-era claims with two insurers, ING Groep of the Netherlands, and Fortis of Belgium and the Netherlands.

The latest agreements follow the landmark one announced Tuesday with Aegon, a Dutch insurer.

Quakenbush's threat came after Carnicelli gave vague, indirect answers to questions and seemed not to know the answers to others.

Generali and other European insurance companies sold policies to Jews during the Nazis' rise to power before World War II, then refused to pay the heirs of Holocaust victims by requiring death certificates, policies and other documents.

That is now widely recognized as absurd, since insurance officials knew the Nazis never issued death certificates for most of the six million Jews they killed.

In California, the Holocaust survivor population is placed at upwards of 20,000 -- the second-largest concentration in the United States -- out of an estimated 860,000 worldwide.

According to Quakenbush's office, Generali wrote 80 percent of the insurance policies "that netted profits at the expense of human life and human suffering."

Carnicelli defended his company's record, saying Generali had given a diskette with 98,000 names to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Israel with an extensive archive of Holocaust records.

"What Generali has done is comply with the spirit" of the state law, he said. "I believe the company is doing everything to comply. I don't understand why you have the feeling that we are not being a good citizen."

"We've already committed to giving (the list) to the commissioner in the context of the international commission, which Commissioner Quackenbush is a part of."

The company has also settled many claims, he added, the most recent last week with descendants of a wealthy Czech wine grower killed at Auschwitz.

But despite pressing from commission lawyers, Carnicelli would not commit to turning over to state authorities the same list already given to Yad Vashem.

He suggested the issue was better handled by the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims, chaired by former US secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger.

Generali, Allianz AG of Germany, AXA of France, Winterthur Zurich of Switzerland and Quackenbush himself all sit on that panel, along with representatives from Jewish groups.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the total value of the funds withheld from Jewish families by the insurance industry is estimated at between one billion and four billion dollars.