03:08 PM ET 08/13/97 Nazis set up secret bank in Monaco - documents say By Arthur Spiegelman LOS ANGELES (Reuter) - Needing a safe haven to hide assets, the German Reichsbank set up a secret branch in Monaco during the Second World War that was thwarted only when future monarch Prince Rainier showed his disgust by boycotting the palace. According to intelligence documents released Wednesday, the tangled tale of Bank Charles involved some famous figures besides Prince Rainier. Among them were Free French leader Charles de Gaulle, Frank Jay Gould, the son of one of America's most famous ``robber baron'' financiers, and a German, Jean Wagner, believed involved in a plot to keep the Nazi party alive after the war. Bank Charles was set up in 1943 by a Swiss businessman Eugene Johannes Charles with a secret infusion of 50 million French francs from the Reichsbank. The German central bank wanted to create a Western European bank that could hide ``collaborationist and German assets,'' the documents discovered by World Jewish Congress researchers in the U.S. National Archives said. One intelligence document said the bank's other purpose was ``to serve the commercial 'expansion' of Germany'' and in reality be a secret affiliate of the Reichsbank.'' Charles was aided in his efforts by a vice president of the Reichsbank, Emil Puhl, who was a key figure in Germany's laundering of looted Nazi gold through Swiss banks and by the then collaborationist chief minister of Monaco, Emile Roblot. The documents said the bank was able to operate for about a year until de Gaulle sent a representative to Monaco to help effect Roblot's ouster as chief minister to Rainier's grandfather, Prince Louis II. Rainier, who joined the Free French, forced the chief minister's departure by leaving the palace and refusing to return ``as long as Roblot remained in office,'' according to a secret April 18, 1945 document prepared for ``Operation Savehaven,'' the U.S. investigation into where the Nazis' money went during the war. Roblot, who was close to Vichy France's pro-Nazi leader Pierre Laval, assisted the Germans in many ways during the war, the intelligence documents said. The U.S. investgaton of Bank Charles found that the wife of American Edward Jay Gould, the only son of turn-of-the-century financier Jay Gould, gave five million francs to become a shareholder in the bank. But the United States found that Gould, who was living in Nice during the war, was actually behind the investment and for a time froze his assets declaring him, his wife Florence and the Bank Charles to be ``Special Blocked Nationals.'' Among those involved in the bank was a German businessman Jean Wagner who investigators believed was a key figure in a secret plan in which funds were sent to Switzerland to organize support for the Nazi movement after the war. As it became clear that Germany would lose, the Nazis attempted to organize leading businessmen to provide funds to revive the party after the war. Banker Charles disappeared from public view after the war but documents said he had deposited 10 millions francs in Swiss banks. He also claimed in interviews when captured and questioned after the war that he was actually pro-Allied and had belonged to a group that wanted a democratic Germany, headed by exiled novelist Thomas Mann. The Americans dismissed his claims. ^REUTER@