In 1995, the WJC initiated negotiations on behalf of various Jewish organizations with Swiss banks and the government of Switzerland over so-called dormant World War II-era bank accounts of Holocaust victims. The WJC entered a class-action lawsuit in Brooklyn, NY alleging that Holocaust victims and their families faced improper barriers to accessing WWII-era Swiss bank accounts because of requirements such as death certificates (typically non-existent for Holocaust victims), and that some Swiss banks made deliberate efforts to retain the account balances indefinitely. The claims also included the value of art works purported to have been stolen, "damages" to persons denied admission to Switzerland on the strength of refugee applications, and the value or cost of labor purported to have been performed by persons being maintained at Swiss government expense in displaced-person camps during the Holocaust, along with interest on such claims from the time of loss. The WJC marshaled the support of US government officials including New York Senator Alfonse D'Amato, who held hearings of the Senate Banking Committee on the topic and claimed that "hundreds of millions of dollars" of WWII-era Jewish assets remained in Swiss banks. At the behest of US President Bill Clinton, Undersecretary of Commerce Stuart Eizenstat testified at these hearings that Swiss banks knowingly purchased looted gold from the Nazis during WWII. Eizenstat was later named special envoy of the US government for Holocaust issues. The report relied exclusively on US government archives. It contained no new historical information on Nazi victims' deposits into Swiss banks, and criticized the decisions of US officials who negotiated settlements with Switzerland after the war as being too lenient.