GENEVA - THE chairman of Switzerland's Socialist Party said on Saturday he plans to lodge a civil complaint against the former head of UBS amid growing anger at the 60-billion-franc bailout of the bank last week.

'I am going to go to the extraordinary general meeting of UBS and lodge a complaint against Marcel Ospel,' Mr Christian Levrat told the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper.

'People like this shouldn't simply get away with this and carry on playing golf,' he said.

Mr Ospel was forced to resign as UBS chairman earlier this year after the bank racked up colossal losses of over 40 billion dollars (S$59.2 billion) in the US subprime crisis.

Mr Ospel has been the whipping boy of the crisis, irking many with the massive bonuses he raked in during the bank's better years.

'Please pay up, Mr. Ospel!' cried Switzerland's main tabloid Blick on its front page.

The newspaper is encouraging readers to write to Mr Ospel and demand he pays back 44 million Swiss francs worth of bonuses accrued in previous years.

UBS's current chairman Peter Kurer provoked more anger last week when he suggested that managers could still get bonuses in double-digit millions.

On Saturday, he sought to calm the waters, telling German-language radio DRS that he thought any bonuses over 10 million francs were 'shocking', and that he would not claim any bonus this year.

Switzerland leapt to the rescue of the once-mighty UBS with a 60-billion-dollar lifeline on Thursday.

The government acknowledged that steps were needed to shore up confidence in Swiss banking, particularly in UBS, the country's biggest bank, which saw a colossal net outflow of funds reaching 83.7 billion Swiss francs in the third quarter as clients took their assets elsewhere.

The emergency help for UBS will see the Swiss state taking a temporary stake of 9.3 per cent in the bank and lending a massive 54 billion dollars to isolate its illiquid assets.

Le Temps newspaper revealed Saturday that the new holding company where the illiquid assets will be placed will be registered in the off-shore tax haven of the Cayman Islands. -- AFP