A sweeping independent audit of Swiss banks headed by a former US central bank governor has not produced an estimate yet of dormant assets owed to victims of the Holocaust, a member of the inquiry said yesterday.

Mr Michael Bradfield, a Washington lawyer and aide to former US Federal Reserve Board chairman Mr Paul Volcker, said Mr Volcker's team of auditors was not estimating the accounts at around 100 million Swiss francs (£48.6 million) as a British paper had reported on Wednesday.

"No, that is not correct," Mr Bradfield told Reuters when asked about the report in the Financial Times.

Some Jewish critics of Swiss banks have said they held up to several billion dollars in money deposited in neutral Switzerland by Jews and other refugees from Nazism. The banks have said the actual amount is much less, although the two biggest Swiss banks agreed last month to pay $1.25 billion to settle all claims against themselves and Switzerland by US lawyers representing Holocaust survivors.