ZURICH, June 17: A US lawyer who helped force Swiss banks into a $1.25 billion settlement for Nazi victims said on Monday he would file suit against top Swiss and US banks for propping up South Africa’s former apartheid regime.

The announcement by Edward Fagan, a maverick lawyer known for his controversial tactics, was made amid high drama.

A jeering, jostling crowd, angry at what they saw as just another attempt to smear Switzerland’s good name, forced the media-savvy lawyer to abandon a news conference on Zurich’s Paradeplatz, home of Credit Suisse’s headquarters and the main Zurich offices of UBS, the country’s two biggest banks.

Fagan later told reporters at a central hotel he was seeking as much as $50 billion in reparations in a class action suit against UBS and Credit Suisse as well as US-based Citicorp Inc., which owns Citibank.

He alleges the banks provided funds to the apartheid government between 1985 and 1993, when the regime was running short of cash because of United Nations sanctions. The banks have dismissed the claims as completely unjustified.

“The truth is we just opened a gaping wound,” Fagan said. “This is a real claim, this is not just bullshit.”

Fagan was accompanied by Dorothy Molefi, the mother of Hector Petersen, a 13-year-old boy who was shot by police during a popular uprising against apartheid in June 1976. The photograph of a man carrying Hector’s dead body became a symbol for the fight against South Africa’s violent regime.

“Hector had the unfortunate distinction of being a sacrifice in this huge struggle,” Fagan said, his arm casually draped around Molefi’s shoulders. The mother, choking with tears, said she had never come to grips with her son’s killing. “Even today it is not easy,” Molefi, one of the lead plaintiffs, whispered.

Fagan alleges the banks arranged large-scale loans to the regime, helping it to buy arms. South Africa’s apartheid system institutionalised racial discrimination in almost all areas of life to secure and bolster white supremacy.

“Fagan go home” and “Wash your dirty linens elsewhere” were some of the politer remarks hurled at Fagan by the mostly elderly crowd on the Paradeplatz, incensed by what they saw as an effort to drag Switzerland’s image through the mud.

“He’s a rascal, a stinking lawyer who’s only after the money,” said one elderly man in the crowd, who jeered and pushed Fagan until he fled the square in a black Mercedes taxicab. Forced to retreat to a hotel, Fagan said he was outraged by the protests and criticised Zurich police for not protecting him better.

TELEPHONE HOTLINE: Fagan made a name for himself by representing victims of the Nazis and their heirs who sued Swiss banks in the 1990s for their alleged role in financing the Holocaust.