BUCHAREST, Romania -- A Swiss legislator said Sunday his government is taking seriously reports that former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu may have stashed up to $1 billion worth of gold and other assets in secret Swiss bank accounts.
Heinrich Ott, a member of a private Swiss delegation on a two-day fact-finding mission in Bucharest, said Swiss authorities already have begun trying to track down the rumored accounts, said to have been registered to phony companies or institutions.
Ott's comments came after interim President Ion Iliescu said on national television that he made a 'hasty decision' and rescinded a decree outlawing the Communist Party. He said on national television late Saturday that the issue would be put before voters in a referendum.
The reversal came less than 24 hours after Iliescu announced the ban, bowing to pressure from thousands of protesters who had gathered at the headquarters of the ruling National Salvation Front, burning party membership cards and chanting anti-communist slogans.
Romanian news media had criticized the behavior of the protesters and warned against allowing the country to slip into a state of anarchy.
The protests Friday 'forced me to make a hasty decision,' Iliescu said. He said the interim Romanian government would let the populace decide whether the party should be banned through a referendum Jan. 28.
A referendum already had been scheduled for that date to decide whether to reinstate the death penalty, abolished after the Christmas Day executions of Ceausescu and his wife, Elena.
Demonstrators over the weekend had also called for the reinstatement of the death penalty for members of Ceausescu's hated Securitate police force, accused of killing thousands of peaceful demonstrators in the week leading up to Ceausescu's fall Dec. 20.
Romanian authorities are expected to begin trials, possibly this week, of all the top 'decision-makers' of the Communist Party government under Ceausescu. Prosecutor General Gheorghe Rodu said Friday that the arrested officials -- including Ceausescu's brother, Nicolae Andrute Ceausescu, the former head of a security school -- would be televised and would begin within days.
Ott said Sunday that Romanian banking officials told the Swiss delegation they believe Ceausescu spirited huge sums of gold out of the country and hid it in bank accounts in Switzerland and possibly other countries.
'If it can be verified that there are fortunes of the Ceausescu clan in Switzerland, then that money must be returned,' Ott told a news conference.
Ott said estimates of the total value of these hidden assets range from $400 million to $1 billion.
The Romanian government has asked the central banks of Switzerland and several other countries to help find the money and return it to the Romanian people.
So far, no firm evidence of the secret accounts has turned up, but Ott, a Socialist member of the Swiss parliament, said the government is taking the reports very seriously and is 'morally committed' to returning any money it finds.
