Bush And Clinton BCCI Bank Fraud, 9/11 Terrorist Financing, And Afghan Heroin. BCCI Bank Financed Covert CIA Terrorist And Drug Smuggling Operations In Afghanistan In The 80s. BCCI scandal: long legal wrangling over collapsed bank | Business. The Bank of Credit and Commerce International was the brainchild of Pakistani businessman Agha Hasan Abedi, who envisioned a bank focused on the third world.
It was set up in 1972 with financial backing from Abu Dhabi, where the ruling family, headed by the late Sheikh Zayed, was said to have a very close relationship with the BCCI. The emirate was the bank's largest depositor, largest borrower, and for most of its existence its largest shareholder. Ultimately a settlement with Abu Dhabi also provided almost half of the funds recovered for creditors.
The bank set up in the City, with offices at 100 Leadenhall Street, close to the Bank of England, and went on to open 22 UK branches. The rapid growth unsettled some regulators at Threadneedle Street. As early as 1982 one internal memo described BCCI as "on its way to becoming the financial equivalent of the SS Titanic! ". This decision led liquidators to sue the Bank of England, alleging regulators had acted with malicious recklessness.
Spies hide as Bank faces BCCI charges | Business | The Observer. A mega-scandal much older than Enron or WorldCom is about to shake the British financial establishment. More than a decade after the spectacular collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, its creditors are finally to put the Bank of England in the dock. The stakes could not be higher for the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. It was the financial regulator in 1991 when the BCCI crashed with £7 billion of undeclared debts, and has long been accused of turning a blind eye to fraud at the Middle Eastern bank. Now it faces a giant lawsuit brought in London by BCCI's victims, who claim it is guilty of negligence amounting to 'misfeasance', or wilful misconduct. The Bank has fiercely denied the charge, and made every effort to get the legal action thrown out. And no wonder.
The Government's worries do not stop there. Then there is the small matter of the role played by Britain's intelligence services, whose relationship with BCCI has long been questioned. 1972 BCCI founded. BCCI | Business. Bank faces £100m bill for BCCI | Money | The Observer. The long-running BCCI trial is on course to cost the Bank of England a record-breaking £100 million in legal fees, bank officials have admitted. Threadneedle Street is spending £20m a year on the case - or nearly a tenth of its budget - according to its annual report, which is published this week. The total spending so far has been £70m, so the Bank's final legal bill will reach £100m if, as is widely expected, the case goes on until the end of 2006.
The news comes as the Bank is due to call the first of its trial witnesses tomorrow. Brian Quinn, now chairman of Celtic plc, the company behind the Glasgow football club, is scheduled to spend the next three months in the witness box. Quinn was the Bank of England's senior banking supervisor when BCCI collapsed with undeclared debts of £7 billion in 1991. Powered by MoneySupermarket for the Guardian The trial, which began in January 2004, has become notorious for its complexity.
Inside the Global Banking Intelligence Complex, BCCI Operations | AmpedStatus. Editor’s Note: The following is Part II of David DeGraw’s new book, “The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III.” This is the third installment to a new seven-part series that we will be posting throughout the next few weeks. You can read the introduction here and Part I here. To be notified via email of new postings from this series, subscribe here.
To get a more complete understanding of our current crisis, we need to look at the history of events that led up to it. In the past I have shied away from going too deeply into the details of the intelligence world out of fear of being written off and dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. I: All Roads Go Through BCCI Here is a partial list of the economic and political scandals that I investigated throughout the 1980s and early ’90s: All of these scandals had one vital thing in common, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). As former US Senate investigator Jack Blum described it: In another report Beaty and Gwynne added: America's NarcoBank: Wachovia Bank was BCCI with a drawl. Convicted Sarasota Ponzi fraudster Art Nadel, currently holed up in a Federal prison in North Carolina, is back in the news, after a Federal bankruptcy receiver filed a lawsuit accusing Wachovia Bank of criminal complicity in Nadel’s theft of $168 million.
This is a story about financial fraud, drug money, and a global crime network that links BCCI, known as the Bank of Crooks & Criminals Incorporated, with North Carolina’s Wachovia Bank. While Art Nadel's Ponzi scheme was at its peak, between 2003 and 2007, Wachovia Bank was engaged in more continuing criminal activity than in all six seasons of The Sopranos. Wachovia helped Nadel—who had recently been playing piano lounges around Sarasota for a living— masquerade as a "hedge fund advisor," even though the bank knew he was nothing of the kind, the suit alleges.
Nadel engaged in at least a dozen regular financial transactions that were serious criminal violations, the suit alleges. The American Drug Lords speak English solamente. The real story of the BCCI. This article appeared in the October 13, 1995 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. The real story of the BCCI by Bill Engdahl and Jeffrey Steinberg In the summer of 1991, the Bank of England took the unprecedented step of shutting down one of the world's largest banks, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International.
Soon afterwards, the District Attorney of Manhattan, Robert Morgenthau, handed down criminal indictments against top officials of the bank. Two rather critical facts, however, were invariably left out of the story—even during the lengthy soap opera trial of former BCCI attorney Robert Altman. The first fact was the extraordinarily close alliance between BCCI and some of Britain's most powerful financial houses and aristocratic families. The second fact was that BCCI was created, and then built up as a "world class" bank, primarily to manage the covert funds that poured into the secret war in Afghanistan. A British 'crown jewel' B.C.C.I.: The Dirtiest Bank of All.
"I could tell you what you want to know, but I must worry about my wife and family -- they could be killed. " -- a former top B.C.C.I. officer "We better not talk about this over the phone. We've found some bugs in offices that haven't been put there by law enforcement. " -- a Manhattan investigator probing B.C.C.I. Bank-fraud cases are usually dry, tedious affairs. Subscribe Now Get TIME the way you want it One Week Digital Pass — $4.99 Monthly Pay-As-You-Go DIGITAL ACCESS — $2.99 One Year ALL ACCESS — Just $30! BCCI (In Liquidation) Business | BCCI liquidators drop £1bn case. Liquidators for BCCI have dropped their £1bn ($1.76bn) damages case against the Bank of England.
Deloitte said it had made the decision after a reserve judgement from the High Court said the case was no longer in the best interest of creditors. The liquidators claimed the Bank had knowingly failed to protect thousands of investors when BCCI collapsed. About 6,500 people lost money when BCCI failed in 1991. The Bank has always denied it was wilfully negligent. 'Disgraceful allegations' Bank of England governor Mervyn King said he was "delighted" with the outcome. "There has never been a shred of evidence to support these disgraceful allegations, and the case has collapsed as we always expected it would," he said. The Bank will now be seeking the "largest possible compensation" for its costs, he added. The judge had already been informed the Bank would be claiming at least £70m, but that may rise depending on the outcome of a hearing into the issue set for a week on Friday.
Historic case. The BCCI Affair. Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Bank of Credit and Commerce International. The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was a major international bank founded in 1972 by Agha Hasan Abedi, a Pakistani financier.[1] The Bank was registered in Luxembourg with head offices in Karachi and London. Within a decade BCCI touched its peak. It operated in 78 countries, had over 400 branches, and had assets in excess of US$20 billion, making it the 7th largest private bank in the world by assets.[2][3] BCCI came under the scrutiny of numerous financial regulators and intelligence agencies in the 1980s due to concerns that it was poorly regulated.
Subsequent investigations revealed that it was involved in massive money laundering and other financial crimes, and illegally gained controlling interest in a major American bank. BCCI became the focus of a massive regulatory battle in 1991 and on 5 July of that year customs and bank regulators in seven countries raided and locked down records of its branch offices.[4] History[edit] F. Lending practices[edit] The U.S.
Files close on BCCI banking scandal | Business. It took 21 years and $656m (£415m) of fees paid to two firms of lawyers and accountants but on Thursday the files were finally closed on the banking scandal that was the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. It ranged from arms trafficking to prostitution and ended with a $20bn collapse. Liquidators and lawyers acting for creditors to BCCI held a final meeting with victims of Britain's biggest banking scandal. About 150 creditors sat in silence at Westminster's Central Hall as liquidators from Deloitte and lawyers from Hogan Lovells explained how the battle for recoveries had taken them around the world, to "desert warehouses" and remote locations where "documents were rotting in damp, humid and rat-infested rooms".
On some occasions the inspection of papers was only permitted under armed guard. The failure of BCCI also revealed a nest of corruption, money laundering and other secretive activities.