Memo 'urged secrecy' on BCCI

[seemslikeadream]

16 February 2004

The Bank of England hid evidence from the Treasury that rogue lender BCCI was on the verge of bankruptcy in the months before its Lbn collapse, the High Court heard today.

A memo by BoE analyst Helen Jones in June 1990 outlined what limits should be put on its disclosures to the Treasury.

'Ministers may reveal what they know in the House. It was decided we would be very careful about how much detailed information we passed on to the Treasury.'

Pollock said: 'The truth was you had a bank in Luxembourg and massive black holes have started appearing.'

Pollack said that by 1990 BCCI auditor Price Waterhouse was so concerned about BCCI that it did not want its chief executive Swaleh Naqvi to attend an international banking meeting.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/business/articles/timid74405?source=

[UpInArms]

1. I can't get your link to work

but I found this story:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/business/articles/timid74093

excerpt:

That is now being played out in Court 73 of the High Court in London in a case in which the BoE is being sued for up to £1bn. If successful, that will top up the recoveries for depositors in a bank which at its height had 45 branches across Britain.

Where Bingham obfuscated, Kerry said the BoE's work on BCCI was 'wholly inadequate', criticising it for persistent cover-up and an obsession with secrecy. He fuelled conspiracy theorists by reporting that the first people in to BCCI offices were MI5 officers who sealed and removed documents. It was Kerry, now 12 years ago, who first accused the BoE of avoiding primary responsibility for supervising BCCI. That accusation is the central tenet of Deloitte & Touche's case.

• AS A senator, John Kerry has a record of budget-cutting, has consistently attacked George Bush over the soaring US deficit and has pledged to slash it if elected President. However, he also promises to keep many of Bush's controversial tax cuts in place for the middle class, only abolishing those that benefit the wealthy - broadly, those earning more than $200,000 a year. At the same time, he wants to boost spending on new healthcare programmes and maintain a fairly high level of defence spending.

[seemslikeadream]

4. It just worked for me

Thanks for the link UpInArms

[JoFerret]

15. Interesting how what seemed long forgotten

has renewed shelf life. And of course - Kerry probably knows where many of the bodies are buried and where the connections lead.

[seemslikeadream]

23. Yes and the Old Lady is a little worried

At the time, the Bank tried to dismiss Kerry's conclusions as
'extraordinary' and having 'no factual basis'. But later it was also pilloried by the official British report into the BCCI disaster, and these days not even the Bank denies that it was at fault. After all it was financial regulator when the London based finance house collapsed in 1991 with L7 billion of undeclared debts - the biggest banking fraud in history.

Among the intelligence received by the Bank during the Eighties were claims - later proved true that Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian dictator, and Abu Nidal's terrorist organization were using BCCI accounts to launder money. Bank officials also had long standing doubts about BCCI's solvency, but apparently did not step in.

Kerry spent almost two years leading the powerful Foreign Relations Sub-committee's investigation of the meltdown, memorably describing BCCI's activities as 'a panoply of financial crimes limited only by the imagination of its officers'. He damned the Bank in his 800 page report, as well as Price Waterhouse, BCCI's auditor.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/economics/story/0,11268,1148264,00.html

[SpiralHawk]

2. BCCI + Bushes + Octopus - some background

Lest we forget.

Before he died in an ineptly performed 'suicide,' the young journalist Danny Casolaro was working on a book that he claimed tied together many of the 'gates' and 'miniscandals' surrounding the Bush presidency.

The book identified the web which tied all the scandals together as the "Octopus," a mythical creature with tentacles stretching everywhere. Perhaps the birth of the Octopus lies in the 1980 Presidential election; and its growth occurred under the eight years of the Reagan presidency.

Casolaro soon found that the Octopus may have consisted of a 'shadow government' apparatus that went back even further than Bush and Reagan. But what's left of his notes seem primarily to focus on events in the 80s and 90s.

http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/octopus.html

[seemslikeadream]

5. Thanks SpiralHawk

You're always there to post great background :hi:

[9215]

46. Mark Lombardi: another mysterious death associated with BCCI,

An artist who made pictures, depicting connections between people involved in major crimes, e.g. the BCCI complex, committed "suicide" after he finished his latest wor-- a drawing about BCCI.

Here is a Village Voice article <http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0350/essay.php>. Excerpt:

Much is being made lately of the FBI's phone call to the Whitney Museum in the immediate aftermath of the 9-11 attacks requesting access to Mark Lombardi's drawing BCCI, ICIC & FAB (1996-2000). This piece, the last work the artist made before he was found dead in his studio in March 2000, an apparent suicide at age 49, represents the tangled web of power and influence that comprised the largest banking scandal in history?in which an impenetrable network of holding companies, affiliates, subsidiaries, and banks-within-banks laundered billions of dollars while supporting terrorism, arms and drug trafficking, and prostitution. The names of Saddam Hussein and George H.W. Bush, among many other high- and low-profile world figures, are connected by a network of delicate, yet potently insinuating, pencil lines. The FBI agent who called was informed that the work was on view in the museum's galleries, where he was welcome to see it during it during regular museum hours. A visit to the current Mark Lombardi exhibition at the Drawing Center (35 Wooster Street, through December 18) by an affiliate of the Homeland Security Agency has also raised eyebrows in the art world.

[seemslikeadream]

52. Amazing artwok 9215 everyone should see it

Thanks for posting the link.

Nor was BCCI a conspiracy. In much of what did, BCCI reflected the way the world works. The organization was designed to mimic the was the world's largest corporations and banks move and hide their money. It was no accident that BCCI was incorporated in Luxembourg, one of the lest regulated nations on earth and a favorite haven of the money men at the Fortune 500. It was no accident that it ran its wildest manipulation through what amounted to a branch in the Cayman Islands - a place long favored by major banks to hold offshore money away from the ken of the IRS and banking authorities.

http://www.the-catbird-seat.net/BCCI.htm

[9215]

53. OOPs. See below. nt

[nolabels]

3. In a nut shell, Bank of Crooks and Criminals International

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/04crime.htm
BCCI'S CRIMINALITY

BCCI's unique criminal structure -- an elaborate corporate spider-web with BCCI's founder, Agha Hasan Abedi and his assistant, Swaleh Naqvi, in the middle -- was an essential component of its spectacular growth, and a guarantee of its eventual collapse. The structure was conceived by Abedi and managed by Naqvi for the specific purpose of evading regulation or control by governments. It functioned to frustrate the full understanding of BCCI's operations by anyone.

Unlike any ordinary bank, BCCI was from its earliest days made up of multiplying layers of entities, related to one another through an impenetrable series of holding companies, affiliates, subsidiaries, banks-within-banks, insider dealings and nominee relationships. By fracturing corporate structure, record keeping, regulatory review, and audits, the complex BCCI family of entities created by Abedi was able to evade ordinary legal restrictions on the movement of capital and goods as a matter of daily practice and routine. In creating BCCI as a vehicle fundamentally free of government control, Abedi developed in BCCI an ideal mechanism for facilitating illicit activity by others, including such activity by officials of many of the governments whose laws BCCI was breaking.

As one BCCI officer later recalled, Abedi had a saying that expressed his view about law:

The only laws that are permanent are the laws of nature. Everything else is flexible. We can always work in and around the laws. The laws change.
(snip)

That last sentence sounds like a Republican mantra

[seemslikeadream]

6. Wouldn't it be great if the name bush

could come up in the summer sometime?

[bobthedrummer]

7. Here is part of that convoluted structure of BCCI-the Saudi part

and how commissions and bribes paid to defense contractors wound up helping finance Osama bin Laden. It is very complex and has flow charts.
http://cryptome.org/soil/soiled-dove2.htm

[seemslikeadream]

8. Thanks bob

and start that thread over in GD, I want to contribute.

[0007]

34. Bush oil money, Harken and BCCI

Great information.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/psy-op/message/11070

A smoking gun? I'd say so!

[9215]

47. Somewhere in all of this there is a smoking gun

IMHO.

[rman]

9. i think "Bank of Criminals and Conspiritors International" rings better

and is arguably more correct.

[nolabels]

10. Anyway you cut it, the "C" is central

How in the hell do we get an AWOL Fraud that professes that one of his major accomplishments to be the "C" grade he accomplished at Yale.

I keep on thinking how could anyone find anything about this fella worthy of admiration. 9/11 his claim to fame, was one of the worst failures and it happened on his watch. * continues to cover up the details about it.

Why in the hell isn't congress beating down the doors of the White House demanding answers? I can't figure it out, how could this one fool take the US so far out of whack. The guy with the "C".

Oh well, I'll keep digging just like a lot of others probably will, maybe we will find out someday

[fobyoc]

32. It is known in the UK as Bank of Crooks & Conmen International

[newyawker99]

56. Hi fobyoc!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[revcarol]

30. Sounds just like Enron.

x

[seemslikeadream]

33. Kinda like Enron, revcarol

Only with BCCI they're playing with :nuke:

If this planet blows to pieces this year, thank Khan Labs' and Bush

You may never have heard of Khan Laboratories, but if this planet blows to pieces this year, it will be thanks to Khans' Labs' creating nuclear warheads for Pakistan's military. Because investigators had been tracking the funding for this so-called "Islamic Bomb" back to Saudi Arabia, under Bush security restrictions, the inquiry was stymied. (The restrictions were lifted, the agent told me without a hint of dark humor, on September 11.)

Noam Chomsky, who read the story on page one of the Times of India, has wondered, "Why wasn't it all over US papers?

A top-level CIA operative who spoke with us on condition of strictest anonymity said that, after Bush took office, "There was a major policy shift" at the National Security Agency. Investigators were ordered to "back off" from any inquiries into Saudi Arabian financing of terror networks, especially if they touched on Saudi royals and their retainers. That put the Bin Ladens, a family worth a reported $12 billion and a virtual arm of the Saudi royal household, off limits for investigation.

I probed our CIA contact for specifics of investigations that were hampered by orders to back off of the Saudis. He told us that Khan Laboratories investigation had been effectively put on hold.

http://www.gergpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=312&row=0

[nolabels]

11. I am sure this is one of the reasons the big banks are lining up for *

This house of cards has some very shaky foundations

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/10accounta.htm
BCCI AND ITS ACCOUNTANTS
Introduction

(snip)
I used to tell the Price Waterhouse and Ernst & Whinney to please review these reports and also please keep me informed, because you are more my eyes and ears than my own inspection division . . . Price Waterhouse had been doing its job, there's no way that this $1 billion exposure which was taken to $11 billion exposure in the course of 3 or 4 months could have happened.(2)

According to Rahman, Price Waterhouse (UK) had signed off on BCCI practices year after year without issuing any red flags, until suddenly, in April, 1990, it found massive deficiencies at the bank, in which, as Senator Kerry put it, "every red flag in the world was flying," raising the question of how Price Waterhouse could have missed all of BCCI's bad practices previously.(3) From Rahman's point of view, local auditors at each of BCCI's locations had the opportunity to review the underlying loan documentation from the beginning. Rahman believed that process of review was precisely what they had been hired to do and failed at. From his point of view, as chief financial officer, his job was to accept the numbers provided him and audited locally the accountants, and from there to put together the overall financial accounts of BCCI. Thus, the deceptions that took place were made possible through the auditors' failure to have looked sufficiently closely at BCCI's customer-by-customer financial records around the world, and especially in the Grand Caymans. As Rahman explained in an annotation to the report prepared by Price Waterhouse to the Bank of England in June, 1991 which helped bring about the closure of BCCI globally:

Price Waterhouse should have known from their audit of Grand Cayman over many years that deposits of BCCI were being misused. The 'fictitious' loan accounts were in most cases so obviously fictitious that the year after year audit of PW should have detected most, if not all. PW not only knew about ICIC Overseas accounts but irregularly "certified these accounts. . . It all happened in, or were initiated by Grand Cayman. . . done by a few people in an amateurish way, right under the nose of PW (Grand Cayman) and PW (UK), who had done audit of these units from their inception (1975.)(4)
(snip)

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/primaries/massachusetts/articles/2004/01/30/workers_at_several_companies_give_100000_or_more_to_bush_campaign/
Workers at several companies give $100,000 or more to Bush campaign
By Sharon Theimer, Associated Press Writer, 1/30/2004

WASHINGTON -- Employees of five financial services companies accounted for more than $1 million of the record $132.7 million President Bush raised last year for his re-election campaign.


All have executives who rank among Bush's "rangers," campaign volunteers who raise at least $200,000 each for Bush, or who are "pioneers," collecting at least $100,000 for the Republican.

Employees of Merrill Lynch individually gave at least $360,000. Workers at Price Waterhouse contributed at least $310,000; UBS, at least $230,000; and Goldman Sachs and MBNA, at least $220,000, reviews of Bush's 2003 campaign finance, reports by The Associated Press and nonpartisan Political Money Line found
(snip)

[david_vincent]

14. Banks always line up for Republican interests

Chase Manhattan and Citibank were the bagmen for the October Surprise.

[nolabels]

17. In 2000 they were in kind of dead heat from what most researchers put...

out according their reports. They didn't (like many) who was going to take the office. This year seems a little different

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/nation/7669721.htm
Posted on Fri, Jan. 09, 2004

Bush gets more support from financial sector

By Glen Justice

The New York Times

WASHINGTON - A new study released Thursday shows that employees and political action committees of brokerages, banks and credit companies compose six of President Bush's top 10 career contributors, an indicator of his increasing support from the financial sector.

In a similar study during the 2000 election, no major financial services companies were among the top 10.

The study was conducted by the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity and published as a book called The Buying of the President 2004. It looks at top contributors to Republican and Democratic presidential candidates over the course of their public careers.

"This money is not coming from backyard bake sales and barbecues," said Charles Lewis, the center's executive director. "It's coming from powerful special interests who want something."

Bush's top financial sponsor was the Enron Corp., the bankrupt energy trader that collapsed amid an accounting scandal. The company and its employees gave almost $603,000 to Bush, said the study, which examined contributions to his campaigns for Congress, Texas governor and the presidency.

Among his corps of 350 elite six-figure fund-raisers, one out of every five comes from the financial sector. Bush has raised $130.8 million so far for this year's election
(snip)

[nolabels]

12. or the bank issue might also have something to do with this

Bush Names SEC Commissioners
http://www.democraticunderground.com/forum_archive_html/DCForumID27/660.html

or maybe this
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/11intel.htm
BCCI, THE CIA AND FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE
Introduction
(snip)
The Subcommittee Investigation and the CIA

The Subcommittee's contact with the CIA regarding BCCI began in March, 1991, when staff learned from a Subcommittee source that the CIA had prepared a report concerning BCCI's criminality which was made available to Customs in late 1988. Cleared staff contacted the CIA's congressional liaison office to request a copy of the document. The staff was told that no such document had ever existed. Perplexed, staff contacted its source to determine whether he was certain that the material had been provided. The source referred staff to former Customs Commissioner William Von Raab, who confirmed the existence of the document. Staff contacted the CIA a second time, and informed the agency that a senior Reagan administration official had viewed the document. Again, the Subcommittee was told that no documents concerning BCCI had ever been created by the CIA.(1)

Staff then met with Von Raab, who revealed that not only had the CIA provided him with a briefing paper regarding BCCI, but that he obtained it through the offices of then-CIA assistant director Robert Gates, who referred to BCCI as "the Bank of Crooks and Criminals." Von Raab also advised the Subcommittee that Customs agents handling the C-Chase investigation of BCCI had discovered in the course of their work several BCCI accounts that were actually accounts held by the CIA. Von Raab told Subcommittee staff that his agents were told to cease their investigation of those particular accounts.(2) However, in an interview with Subcommittee staff, AUSA Mark Jackowski denied that he had ever uncovered any CIA involvement with the bank and Assistant Attorney General Robert Mueller testified that "at no time ...has anyone from the CIA ... attempted to obstruct or interfere with the Department of Justice's investigation and prosecution of BCCI."(3)

On May 14, 1991, Senator Kerry wrote CIA Director Webster to again request the briefing paper on BCCI prepared by the CIA, as well as information on the CIA's own use of the bank. No reply was received in response to this letter from the CIA for over two months, during which BCCI was closed globally following its seizure in the United Kingdom by the Bank of England on July 5, 1991.
(snip)

[nolabels]

13. Could even have something to do with this

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/economics/story/0,11268,1148264,00.html
Old Lady won't be keen on President Kerry

Conal Walsh on how the Democrat was a big critic over BCCI
(snip)
Lawyers for the creditors, who are demanding damages of £1bn, have spent the first few weeks of the trial airing internal Bank memos. They seem to show that Threadneedle Street long suspected BCCI's involvement in a range of criminal activities, but chose not to intervene - allegedly in the expectation that it could shift responsibility for a messy scandal on to regulators abroad.

Among the intelligence received by the Bank during the Eighties were claims - later proved true - that Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian dictator, and Abu Nidal's terrorist organisation were using BCCI accounts to launder money. Bank officials also had long-standing doubts about BCCI's solvency, but apparently did not step in.

Further questions are going to be asked about what Ministers, civil servants and some of the City's top institutions knew about BCCI before its meltdown. Meanwhile, BCCI is fast becoming a fashionable subject again in Washington, too, as the US media pore over their would-be president's record.

Kerry spent almost two years leading the powerful Foreign Relations Sub-committee's investigation of the meltdown, memorably describing BCCI's activities as 'a panoply of financial crimes limited only by the imagination of its officers'. He damned the Bank in his 800-page report, as well as Price Waterhouse, BCCI's auditor.
(snip)



http://www.hereinreality.com/familyvalues.html
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/poli/soa/panama.htm
PANAMA:

THE RESUMÉ OF MANUEL NORIEGA,

THE MOST FAMOUS GRADUATE OF THE SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS

(1) Noriega, considered "outstanding" at the SOA, is on the CIA payroll (to the tune of up to $100,000 a year) from the mid-’60s to the mid-’80s.

(2) His drug trafficking, though known, is no obstacle to his chumminess with George Bush (CIA director and "Vice" President) during the ’70s and early ’80s.

(3) His true crime is being an independent leader of Panama, just before the US is obliged to return the stolen Panama Canal Zone on January 1st, 1990.

(4) So after publicly demonizing his longtime friend and employee, Bush slaughters thousands of Panamanians and installs a puppet government, in the nick of time, on December 20th, 1989.
(snip)

[seemslikeadream]

25. Thanks also to you nolabels

for all this great info. I just posted the Kerry stuff too, sorry I missed yours.

[Zhade]

27. My father was duped into taking part in the invasion of Panama.

God DAMN the b*sh family. Damn them to the lowest depths of Hell.

[chelaque liberal]

42. Could you elaborate? I don't know if that is an old DU subject

but it is something I am interested in.

[punpirate]

16. BCCI also figured prominently...

... in another BFEE enterprise, the so-called "October Surprise" story:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile4.html

Other reports suggest that the CIA used BCCI extensively, particularly from a branch in Australia, I believe, to move money around surreptitiously.

[Octafish]

18. Nugan Hand helped eliminate an "unfriendly" Australian government.

The thing about BCCI is it ultimately was a vehicle for transferring wealth to the elite. All the wars it financed, all the weapons it transferred, all the drug money it laundered was used to further enrich the few while enslaving the survivors and penuring the serfs. No one stands in its way, even the government of our allies. It was the standard BFEE business model. — Octafish.

Dealing in Death:
The CIA and the Drugs Trade
How the Agency Created America's Heroin and Cocaine Epidemics

EXCERPT...

NUGAN HAND

One of the earliest revelations of the CIA's involvement with laundering drug money came with the collapse of the Nugan Hand Bank. One of the founding partners of the bank, Michael Jon Hand, was a Green Beret who served with the CIA for two years, fighting with Hmong guerrillas in northern Laos. It was here that he acquired the expertise in narcotics that he later applied to building the bank.

Hand moved to Sydney in 1967, where he became involved in selling real estate to Americans serving in Southeast Asia. He maintained many of his CIA contacts; 19 of the 71 shareholders of his company Australasian and Pacific Holdings Ltd. were employees of the CIA's Air America and Continental Air Services.

In Sydney, Hand met Frank Nugan, a solicitor and businessman whose family ran a fruit-packing business near Griffith in New South Wales, a district famous for its drug crops and gang murders. The two set up Nugan Hand Ltd. in 1973, through a gross financial fraud. With only $80 in the company's bank account and just $5 in paid-up capital, Frank Nugan wrote his own company a personal cheque for $980,000 to purchase 490,000 shares of its stock. He then covered his massive overdraft by writing himself a company cheque for the same amount. Through this accounting fraud, Nugan could claim that the company's paid-up capital was a million dollars.

The Nugan Hand Bank offered tax-free deposits, the highest interest rates and secrecy, and its specialty was money laundering, at 22 cents on the dollar. Over the next six years, the bank grew at a remarkable rate by providing a bridge between larger, legitimate banks and a shadowy web of organised crime, illegal money laundering and covert intelligence operations.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wakeupmag.co.uk/articles/ciadrugslaunder.htm

[seemslikeadream]

19. Thanks Octafish

I knew you would be here.

[Octafish]

21. You're welcome, seemslikeadream! Hear about Wendy GRAMM and BCCI?

...Seems the wonderful wife of that smooth-talking ex-Senator and fun-loving deregulator, Phil "ENRON" Gramm, might have to do some serious explaining about her ties from BCCI to ENRON before a Citizen's Grand Jury:

(Kerry Senate subcommittee's BCCI report, no copyright problems)

CAPCOM

Introduction

In the entire BCCI affair, perhaps no entity is more mysterious and yet more central to BCCI's collapse and criminality than Capcom, a London and Chicago based commodities futures firm which operated between 1984 and 1988. Capcom is vital to understanding BCCI because BCCI's top management and most important Saudi shareholders were involved with the firm. Moreover, Capcom moved huge amounts of money -- billions of dollars -- which passed through the future's markets in a largely anonymous fashion.

Capcom was created by the former head of BCCI's Treasury Department, Ziauddin Ali Akbar, who capitalized it with funds from BCCI and BCCI customers. The company was staffed, primarily, by former BCCI bankers, many of whom had worked with Akbar in Oman and few of whom had any experience in the commodities markets. The major investors in the company were almost exclusively Saudi and were largely controlled by Sheik AR Khalil, the chief of Saudi intelligence. Additionally, the company employed many of the same practices as BCCI, especially the use of nominees and front companies to disguise ownership and the movement of money. Four Americans, Larry Romrell, Robert Magness, Kerry Fox and Robert Powell -- none of whom had any experience or expertise in the commodities markets -- played important and varied roles as frontmen.

While the Subcommittee has been able to piece together the history of Capcom and can point to many unusual and even criminal acts committed by the firm, it still has not been able to determine satisfactorily the reason Capcom was created and the purposes it served for the various parties connected to the BCCI scandal. It appears from the available evidence that Akbar, BCCI, and the Saudis all may have pursued different goals through Capcom, including:

-- misappropriation of BCCI assets for personal enrichment.

-- laundering billions of dollars from the Middle East to the US and other parts of the world.

-- siphoning off assets from BCCI to create a safe haven for them outside of the official BCCI empire.

SNIP...

Despite suspicions about highly unusual transactions, CFTC Chairperson Wendy Gramm told the Subcommittee:

In terms of finding trading violations or Commodity Exchange Act violations that perhaps could support money laundering, we did not find any discernible pattern...o one has ben able to --at least other law enforcement officials have not been able to find money laundering in Capcom US, to our knowledge, as of now.(133)

Money laundering, as Chairperson Gramm testified, is not even a violation of the Commodities Futures Trading Act. Incredibly, it appears that the CFTC and the self-regulatory organizations have never even made a criminal referral for possible money laundering:

Senator Kerry. ave you ever specifically referred, or have any of the exchanges ever made a criminal referral for money laundering?

Dr. Gramm. We have raised concerns.

Senator Kerry. Have you made a criminal referral for money laundering?

Dr. Gramm. No. Not-- not specifically in that regard...

Continued...

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/21capcom.htm


When it comes to energy and petrodollars, the stench crosses party lines, consider:

Birds of a Feather

EXCERPT...

In 1973, during the Arab oil embargo, the Nixon Administration tried to lease Elk Hills to boost domestic oil production. In 1984, 1986, and 1987, the Reagan Administration proposed selling Elk Hills for a lump sum payment of $1.5 billion that would go toward reducing the federal budget deficit. Each time, Congress wisely blocked the sale of Elk Hills.

But where Fall, Nixon, and Reagan had failed, Gore succeeded. ... President Clinton took Gore's advice and approved a deal to let oil companies buy some of the reserves. The White House then pushed to have language authorizing the sales inserted in the 1996 defense authorization bill, which Congress ultimately approved.

Oil companies bid on the field and, finally, on Oct 6, 1997, the Energy Department announced that the government would sell its interest in the 47,000-acre Elk Hills reserve to Occidental Petroleum Corp for $3.65 billion. It was the largest privatization of federal property in U.S. history, one that tripled Occidental's U.S. oil reserves overnight. . . .

Although the Energy Dept was required to assess the likely environmental consequences of the proposed sale, it didn't. Instead, it hired a private company, ICF Kaiser International, Inc., to complete the assessment. The general chairman of Gore's presidential campaign, Tony Coelho, sat on the board of directors.

CONTINUED...

http://www.the-catbird-seat.net/Catbird1


Here's an excellent resource for those interested in bringing down the BFEE:

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/ultAgent.html

[seemslikeadream]

20. And I know you will like this

If John Kerry, the Democrat from Massachusetts, gets to the White House this November, they won't be cheering his victory in Threadneedle Street.

He may be riding high in the US presidential race today, but Kerry first came to Britain's attention as the senator who accused the Bank of England of turning a blind eye to fraud at BCCI.

Kerry led the Senate's investigation into BCCI's mulitbillion-dollar crash, and here's what he had to say: 'The Bank of England delayed unconscionably in closing BCCI, and millions of investors were hurt...It was negligent and costly...I'm saying very directly that the Bank of England had sufficient information in front if it to close BCCI 15 months earlier that it did.'

He is one of the Old Lady's sharpest critics and, come New Year, he could also be the world's most powerful man.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/economics/story/0,11268,1148264,00.html

[Octafish]

22. Yeah! It's going to be really something...

Thanks for doing all to get the word out, seemslikeadream! It's one way of spreading the word about the Bush Organized Crime Family, but it also serves protect John Kerry. The BFEE gets real mad when someone interrupts the money flow. Consider the Kennedy and Wellstone families, for starters. The only thing that stops them from doing the vilest of human acts is the knowledge they are being watched.

[seemslikeadream]

24. Did you see this!

Some commentators suggest Kerry 'went easy' at the time on Clark Clifford, a prominent Democrat and former US Defense Secretary with ties to BCCI. On the other hand, one of the (unheeded) recommendations he made in his report - that US authorities actively pursue evidence that BCCI was being used to fund an incipient Pakistani nuclear programme - now seems prescient, given recent revelations about Pakistan's role in nuclear proliferation.

Kerry plans to make a crackdown on banking secrecy and tougher regulation a key component of his campaigning rhetoric. For the Bank of England, that could yet mean an unwanted role in America's presidential race.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/economics/story/0,11268,1148264,00.html

And didn't I read that Price Waterhouse is one of bush's biggest contributors.

And don't forget "Fortunate Son" documentary Cinemax Wednesday :nuke:

[nolabels]

26. Is some of it?

Maybe some it was written by someone with them (R) leanings and were hitting for Clinton at the time, but there is some meat in there none the less. This from a time when Clinton was still in grade school. None the less it seems to be the embryo of BCCI. Them folks who live in the ME seem to have a knack for trade.

http://www.ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/arian/scandals/classic.html#enron
http://www.orlingrabbe.com/part10.htm
Allegations Regarding Vince Foster, the NSA, and Banking Transactions Spying, Part X
by J. Orlin Grabbe
(lots more above for connections but here is some of the meat)(snip)
But while BCCI founder Abedi had intended BCCI to finance the development of a Pakistani nuclear bomb, this effort was compromised at the start by the presence of Kamal Adham, who through CCAH was the controlling power behind First American, and who had asked Clark Clifford to head up the bank. For Adham was both a CIA and a Mossad asset. Adham, in addition to being Faisal's most trusted advisor and the former head of Saudi intelligence, had attended CIA training school with the head of the Mossad.

"Kamal Adham, who was the CIA's principal liason for the entire Middle East from the mid-1960's through 1979, was the lead frontman for BCCI in its takeover of First American, was an important nominee shareholder in BCCI, and remains one of the key players in the entire BCCI affair" (Senator John Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, The BCCI Affair: a Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, December 1992).

Perhaps that is why Pakistani's efforts to develop their own nuclear bomb met with repeated compromises, such as the following:

"In 1983 a Dutch court convicted Dr. Abdul Qader Khan, head of Pakistan's nuclear program, on charges of stealing the blueprints for a uranium enrichment factory. . . . Kahn's lawyer was paid by BCCI.

"In 1984, three Pakistani nationals were indicted in Houston for attempting to buy and ship to Pakistan, high-speed switches designed to trigger nuclear weapons. The trio offered to pay in gold supplied by BCCI.

"In 1987 two Americans, Rita and Arnold Mandel, together with Hong Kong businessman Leung Yu Hung, were indicted by the U.S. Attorney in Sacramento, California, on charges of illegal importations of $1 billion worth of oscilloscopes and computer equipment for Pakistan's nuclear program. . . . BCCI facilitated "

"In 1987 in Philadelphia, Ashad Pervez, a Pakistani-born Canadian, was indicted for conspiring to export restricted specialty steel and metal used to enhance nuclear explosions. ... He . . . paid high prices with money delivered to the Toronto BCCI branch from BCCI London" (Rachel Ehrenfeld, Evil Money, HarperCollins, 1992).

BCCI became a important conduit for CIA intelligence, and also a ready target for the tenacles of the NSA. When Norman Bailey at the National Security Council urged NSA to "follow the money" as part of the "wars" on terrorism and drugs, the NSA had BCCI as one obvious banking target. The CIA was there also to assist in the monitoring of BCCI-related money flows of other intelligence and criminal enterprises. For BCCI had become a giant laundry machine, and the CIA made use of BCCI for their own covert money transfers.
(snip)

[RainDog]

28. BCCI- Pakistan Nuclear Program

in case anyone didn't see this first time it was posted...

via Outlaw Bank by Beaty and Gwynne.

from Sheikh Kamal Adham, former head of Saudi intelligence, bro-in-law of late King Faisal, and shareholder in BCCI and First American Bank, who was speaking to an Arabic audience when admitted, in 1992, that "Pakistan had their own atomic bomb and that Abedi/BCCI had helped them get it.

(Kamal Adham was anticipating...indictment in the U.S. over BCCI fraud. )

"So why would he want to call attention to all of this? The Western press aside, the wily old spy master certainly knew the intelligence agencies of the U.S. would pick up his remarks...He may have been sending a message directly to George Bush, reminding the president that Kamal Adham knew far too much to be trifled with.

in perspective...9-91. Morganthau was going after the powerful Saudi as one of the main culprits of the BCCI scandal. Morganthau kept quiet about his intentions to indict Adham AND SHEIKH KHALID BIN MAHFOUZ (in hopes to avoid state department inverventions.)

but when Kamal found out what was happening, he hired the former executive assistant of then White House Chief of Staff John Sununu...who had just (surprise...not) quit to go "private."

This publically brought the Bush administration into the BCCI scandal for the first time.

Beaty and Gwynne learned that Bush's White House was closely monitoring the BCCI investigation, insisting that a administration official sit in on congressional and justice dept. interviews with BCCI witnesses (does this sound familiar to anyone else?? ...the investigation into whistleblowing with Dubya).

some in the FBI complained the FBI probe was spinning its wheels because it was "too political" (again, sound familiar as an excuse to investigate the Bush lies to go to war with Iraq???)...and decisions were being held up in Washington.

A justice dept official complained Washington didn't really want the Atty Gen.'s office to actually return indictments. Washington (Bush) wanted to do an overall package deal, "'where we cut off the hands of a few Pakistanis and paint it as if they were really all the big folks.'"

Beaty and Gwynne go on to note that Bush Sr, lied and claimed he didn't know Adham. (who had been director of Saudi intel in 1976, WHEN GEORGE BUSH HEADED THE CIA).

The American agency had been "helping to modernize Saudi intelligence during Bush's tenure (oh, no conflict of interest there, huh, Zapata Oil?)

The authors also note that Bush was known as "the Saudi vice president" throughout the middle east. State dept said it was impossible for Bush not to have known Adham because he was the main man in S.A. when you making BIZ DEALS, as well as policy.

when asked about Bush's statement, Adham did not directly deny it, though Saudi's knew Adham's newphew, Sultan bin-Bandar was ambassador to the U.S. and was a frequent guest of Bush.

...but what about the nuclear weapons issue? Reagan, "intent on continuing military aid to Pakistan during the Afghanistan (mujahadeen/Osama bin Laden as Reagan's allies) war, turned a blind eye b/c U.S. law prohibited military aid or sale to nonnuclear countries known to be developing nuclear weapons.

In 88 and 89, Bush danced on the edge of truth about Pakistan, saying it did not "possess a nuclear explosive device" to justify continuing MASSIVE support for Pakistan, b/c Pak, bush said, only had "unassembled components."

As soon as Russia pulled out of Afghanistan, Bush said unassembled components violated the rules and cut off aid.

Beaty and Gwynne, in Time Magazine, were "the first to assert that BCCI was instrumental in Pakistan achieving unofficial Nuclear Club membership.

Via BCCI, Pakistan had received sophisticated American military technology that Congress NEVER AUTHORIZED. Adham's remarks re: an atmomic bomb may have been suggesting that it wouldn't be in the Bush administration's self-interest to probe too deeply into how Pakistan, and BCCI, came to possess such military capacity.

The Sheikh knew that BCCI was "the creation of a real life Dr. No, whose empire brokered ballistic missiles, illicit pharmaceuticals, stolen military secrets, heroin, and hot money, leaving a trail of corruption across two decades and seventy countries. And of all people, Adham had reason to know that the (Bush) White House knew it too, and had known about it for years."

pp 272-77

[seemslikeadream]

35. RainDog, you are always there with the facts

Thank you. I have learned so much from you.

Pardon for scientist who sold atom bomb secrets
By Ahmed Rashid in Lahore and Robin Gedye

Pakistan is likely to pardon without trial the father of the country's atomic bomb even though he has confessed to selling nuclear technology to rogue states, a senior government official told the Telegraph yesterday.

Another promised international indignation in the event of pardon. "He is the world's biggest criminal, involved for 27 years in selling nuclear technology. If you let him off with a slap on the wrist, then what and of message are you sending to others?"

Mr. Khan has let it be known that he is prepared to blow the whistle on the army's involvement. A cabinet minister revealed that Mr. Khan's daughter, a British citizen, had traveled to London with papers that could incriminate generals and other Pakistani leaders, including the former minsters Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?zml=/news/2004/02/04wpak04...
to view this story you have to login in it's date Feb. 4 2004

[RainDog]

39. I wish!

but thanks for the kind remark.

I've been reading Kevin Phillips' American Dynasty off and on...and more off than on recently.

but this afternoon I was reading about Bush Sr and The October Surprise, etc. and Phillips quotes this same portion of this book!

Was a nice synchronous moment.

Phillips also tells about Robert Parry's investigation of the Oct. Surprise, and while Phillips doesn't put Bush Sr. in Paris for the talks between Casey and the Iranians, he doesn't absolutely say he wasn't, either...he speculates Casey did the dirty work w/o Bush Sr. present.

Parry, however, has continued to note the discrepancies in Bush's explanations for where he was when the Paris guns for hostage meetings started, and Phillips also notes that BCCI was already in place and busy with its dirty work at this time...

and makes the implication that BCCI was the route for the arms for hostages deal that Bush contrived, with his CIA buddies, to make sure Carter couldn't win the election with a return of the hostages.

Phillips has some more interesting things to say about the Bush vice-pres and presidency. He seems to place Bush as a central figure in all the Reagan illegal shenanigans, and notes that Reagan had more ex-CIA in his govt than ever before, which just so happened to coincide with all sorts of illegal and messy dealings which, Phillips, a long-standing conservative with impeccable credentials who has declared himself an independent with this latest King Georgie Porgie in power...

anyway, Phillips says that the mess that Bush Sr. and HIS particular cronies in the CIA got us into back then, plus ALL the Bush babies, Marvin, Neal, and Georgie, esp, with their deals in the area, too, have very much responsibility for the payback that is Al Qaeda and the WTC attacks.

Of course, he doesn't even get into the idea that black ops might be more...influential in the events leading up to and on 9-11 than that, but he also ignores Kissinger's October Surprise when talking about Phillips' old favorite, Nixon.

[emad]

49. Some more on this:

From: Pakistan Facts


Pakistan investigates BCCI role in sale of nuclear knowhow
Wednesday, February 04 2004 @ 06:11 PM CST
Stephen Fidler and Farhan Bokhari


The Pakistani government is examining records of the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International in its investigation into the role Pakistani scientists may have played in selling nuclear knowhow to Iran, North Korea and Libya. According to bankers, some of whom worked with BCCI before it collapsed in 1991, Pakistani investigators have sought the help of former BCCI employees to try to uncover payments made to scientists connected with Pakistan's nuclear programme. BCCI's role in financing Pakistan's own nuclear efforts has long been the subject of scrutiny. In 1992, a report into BCCI from a US Congressional sub-committee headed by Senator John Kerry, now a leading Democratic presidential contender, said "there is good reason to conclude that BCCI did finance Pakistan's nuclear programme". Though it said the issue deserved further investigation, there was little public follow-through.

This year, however, as evidence has mounted that Pakistani scientists helped the uranium enrichment programmes of Iran, North Korea and Libya, the Pakistani government has launched an investigation. A government spokesman in Islamabad said that anybody found to have passed on secrets would be punished, but denied that the government approved any transfers. At least 11 Pakistani scientists and officials - as well as the so-called father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan - have been questioned.

BCCI helped the Pakistani government under General Zia ul Haq, the military dictator killed in a 1988 plane crash, to channel payments from the US Central Intelligence Agency to fighters seeking to oust Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Soviet troops withdrew in 1989 but former BCCI officials said the relationship for organising undocumented payments for influential Pakistanis continued until the bank's collapse. One former BCCI banker who said he organised funds transfers on behalf of senior military officers in the Zia regime commented: "I'm not surprised that the Pakistanis are now looking to put together dossiers on some of their scientists receiving payments through BCCI." He said that over the past two months, Pakistani officials had travelled to the Middle East, looking for evidence of nuclear scientists receiving payments through BCCI.

Another former BCCI banker said that establishing payments to Pakistani nuclear scientists through the bank could provide evidence about the so far undocumented role of senior former Pakistani military officers in overseeing the transfer of nuclear knowhow to other countries. The investigation has prompted speculation among western intelligence officials and diplomats over the extent to which General Zia, leader of a frontline anti-communist state, in fact sanctioned the transfer of nuclear knowhow to Iran. In the past four to eight weeks, he said the Pakistani investigators have been seeking evidence of payments made to Mohammad Farooq, one of the nuclear scientists at the centre of the investigation. Pakistani officials are said to have focused on Mr Farooq as a possible contact between the Iranians and Mr Khan.

<snip>
http://www.pakistan-facts.com/article.php/20040204181106258

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

29. Get a book called "The Crimes of Patriots"

by Jonathan Kwitny (sp?) because I think it's the Nugan Hand bank you're referring to.

Related is Alfred McCoy's "The Politics of Heroin", RT Naylor's "Hot Money and the Politics of Debt" & "The Great Heroin Coup" by a German (I think) guy who's name escapes me.

But "The Crimes of Patriots" is excellent, & the story of Nugan Hand is in many ways the same story as BCCI, but on a smaller scale.

[seemslikeadream]

31. I appreciate your post McMd

Crimes of Patriots

Crime of the Century

Now they're planning the crime of the century
Well what will it be?
Read all about their schemes and adventuring
It's well worth a fee
So roll up and see
And they rape the universe
How they've gone from bad to worse
Who are these men of lust, greed, and glory?
Rip off the masks and let's see.
But that's not right - oh no, what's the story?
There's you and there's me
That can't be right

--Supertramp

[Minstrel Boy]

36. Thanks for the tip, I've been looking

for a book on Nugan Hand.

The patterns and the players keep repeating and recycling over and over again.

I recently read "Trading with the Enemy: An Expose of the Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-1949" by Charles Higham. I was struck by how familiar the case of the Bank of International Settlements seemed to BCCI. The story even had its own Morgenthau - Henry, FDR's Secretary of the Treasury - who wanted to put a stop to BIS serving as a cover for American industrialists' profiteering relationship with the Nazis.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

37. I've been trying to get hold of Trading with the Enemy

for ages now -- bloody hard book to track down in the UK (& I'm not willing to pay top$$ for it!)

Ditto with Jules Archer's book on the planned Wall St coup against FDR (called The Plot to Steal the Whitehouse - or something like that).

Coupla others on my wishlist, from the top of my head, include Gerald Colby's impossible to find book on the DuPont's & Paul Manning's "Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile".

[groovedaddy]

38. The Jules Archer Book

is titled "Plot to Seize the WhiteHouse"
Just read it (from the local University library). USMC Gen. Smedley Butler is the one who tipped off the Feds, as this group tried to recruit him, as he was very popular among veterans of the time.
The Congressional findings never released the names of those involved - too powerful.

[RainDog]

40. fwiw

Feral Press has released a small book version of Gen. Butler's "War is a Racket." The entire text of the essay is available online, but the Feral Press version has an essay at the beginning of the book by a guy who talks about the coup attempt and the House investigation.

it also has photos of war injured from WW1, which was part of another book of the time.

Feral House Press has also re-released a copy of Octopus: The Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro.

isbn 0-922915-91-1

from the back of the book:

..."The players Casolaro identified in his research, including Iran-Contra spooks, Middle Eastern weapons merchants, double-dealing politicos, and terrorists, have reappeared.

This book...starts with the 1980 October Surprise, a trading-with-the-enemy scheme that set the stage for America's quagmire in the Middle East....The grisly saga continues with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein evading capture through the use of the infamous PROMIS software...

...This newly revised edition, with new chapters on Octopus involvements with the events of 9/11, may be the most comprehensive investigation into the tangle of international conspiracy."

[Karenina]

41. Kick!!!

:kick:

[seemslikeadream]

43. Thanks Karenia

Bank warned over BCCI in 1977

The Bank of England was warned by Luxemburg regulators as far back as 1977 about major problems with auditing the collapsed Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a court heard today.

...Then Bank of England Govenor Sir Richardson wrote on a memo about BCCI: 'They are not under effective review.'

http://thisislondon.co.uk/news/business/articles/timid74568?source

[seemslikeadream]

44. Innocent people suffered. It's the Bush system

While chairing the BCCI subcommittee, and before he married Teresa Heinz, Kerry would ofter sit at the bar at Capitol Hill's Tex-Mex Red River Grill offering anyone who would listen to stories (even a second and third time) about what his investigation had discovered about the illegal activities of the Reagan Bush administration: the arms for drugs operations in Central America that involved Noriega; the later convicted Reagan officials John Poindexter, Richard Secord, Elliott Abrams, and Oliver North; Iranian con-man and neo-con hero Manucher Ghorbanifar; Saudi tycoon Adnan Khashoggi, who Perle recently attempted to lure into his Trireme Partners Middle East investment scheme; Gaith Pharoan, who was involved with Saudi billionaire banker Khalid Bin Mahfouz in business deals with George W. Bush's Harker Engery and Bin Laden family investments in Texas; how Hill & Knowlton, the firm that concocted the phony story about Iraqi troops tossing babies from incubators during their invasion of Kuwait, was shilling for BCCI and providing regulators with false information about the bank's business relationships; BCCI's involvement in Pakistan's nuclear program; it's bankrolling of convicted arms dealer Sarkis Sarkenalian's illegal weapons smuggling to Iraq in the 1980s; hawalah transfers that allowed Afghan mujaheddin to evade international financial surveillance mechanisms (including the pumping of millions of dollars of Saudi and Omani money into Usama bin Laden's coffers in Afghanistan and Pakistan); and the 1980 "October Surprise" involving negotiations between Reagan campaign chief William Casey to delay the release of US hostages until after the US election, thus sinking the prospects of President Carter. When BCCi's illegal activities on behalf of the Bush family and their CIA friends around the world became the subject of criminal probes and media investigations in the mid-1980s, the Bushes, as they normally do, cut and run. BCCI collapsed and Enron took its place.

http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen02192004.html

[seemslikeadream]

45. Bank of England's George Mislead About BCCI Theft

Sir Edward George was misled by a senior Bank of England official about the theft of $2.2 billion of the Abu Dhabi royal family's savings at Bank of Credit of Commerce International, the High Court in London heard.

George, then deputy governor, was told in a May 1991 memo by John Bartlett, deputy head of banking supervision at the time, that the missing funds were a "private subsidy by the Abu Dhabi royal family," said Gordon Pollock QC, lead lawyer for BCCI's liquidators. The money had been stolen from the family by Agha Hasan Abedi and Swaleh, the men who headed BCCI, he said.

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000102&sid=a3TgdixKYGf8&refer=uk

[emad]

48. Here's some more threads on this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1130171

and another:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1140623

[loudsue]

50. You've GOT to wonder: Where has the (monkey)business gone to

since the collapse of the BCCI? You KNOW these kooks and spooks haven't just "gone out of business". You KNOW these global-government mafia-style criminals haven't just suddenly STOPPED laundering money, dealing in arms, prostitutes, kids and drugs. So, which bank is now doing their dirty work?

The unfathomable amounts of money the BFEE is making on the wars shrub started, and Poppy's gold mines, and the bumper-crop opium $$ from Afghanistan since the Taliban had to take their form of government underground, and Dubya's connections (and obscenely huge political contributions) from the big banks and oil and global corporations....you KNOW they're hiding, and laundering, this money SOMEWHERE! But where?

The work of the BCCI hasn't just STOPPED! We know this, because we can see that there are HUGE amounts of money being sucked out of our economy. So....which bank has taken the reins?

You know, for many centuries, these top-tier money mongers have been running the world like wizards behind the curtain. Only since the internet, have regular "Joe's" like us been able to track their movements, and make it (slightly) more transparent. And the octopus is HUGE, POWERFUL (almost omnipotent), WITHOUT MORALS OR CONSCIENCE, and run by geniuses of deception.

Is it too much to dream O8) that this information (and internet activism) could eventually turn this octopus into a feast for the common people to catch, kill and eat?

The law and the courts are the basis of any civilized world, yet without a vote (see: Diebold...another part of the octopus, IMHO), the people CAN'T elect powerful, ethical leaders to APPOINT judges who would enforce laws and run ethical courts. As for the judges who are elected by the people, without a free press (...yet another part of the octopus, IMHO) there's no way to educate the masses on the POSITIONS of the judges we might vote for (again, if our votes counted).

The SYSTEM, as we "believed" it was, has been shown to be a complete illusion, since the advent of the internet. At least, to those of us "common people" who are political junkies/researchers.

That, to me, is why an auditable, ethically counted election is a cornerstone of any future progress for civilization -- for the masses. And right behind that, is the other cornerstone of a free and courageous press. With those two avenues ALONE open to the common people, we can change EVERYTHING that has been wrong with the world. We can actually contain the criminal element in humanity, and turn the world into a place we can actually thrive and prosper in.

It's taken almost 20 years for the BCCI to be brought to its knees and exposed. But, where has the same criminal element started hiding out in its stead?

This thread, by the way, rocks! Thanks to all for great investigative journalism!!

:loveya::pals:

:kick:

[seemslikeadream]

51. What spooks told Old Lady about BCCI

Thanks loudsue for the encouragement and thoughts, I really appreciate it.

M16 and the Bank had suspicions, so why was nothing done, creditors ask in the High Court.
By Conal Walsh

On a spring day in 1989, Roger Barnes of the Bank of England's supervisory division sat down for a meeting with officers from M16. The officers asked him to tell them what he knew about the Bank of Credit and Commerce International.

Rumours of fraud were starting to swirl around the giant Pakistani-Arab hank, whose main office was in Leadenhall Street in the City.

Barnes's reply was unsettling. According to the M16 officers, he told them that BCCI had 'no natural or established customer base and there was no obvious, respectable explanation as to how it came to grow so quickly and became so profitable...it was widely assumed that the BCCI management were less than meticulous as to what funds they handled'.

Other Bank of England officials were more forthright, telling M16 of allegations linking BCCI to drug gangs in Colombia and to the military regime of General Manuel Noriega in Panama.

But if the Bank knew of alleged unsavoury dealings at BCCI why didn't it investigate them? That is the question at the heart of the blockbuster legal case that began at the High Court in London last week.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/economics/story/0,11268,1125478,00.html

[9215]

54. The head of the Octopus, or,

at least, its wallet.

BCCI linked to terrorists who are linked to BFEE>pedophile rings>child kidnappings?>>>>


The BFEE is presently in control of much of the political machinery that would be brought to bear on BCCI in more sane times. But the pressure is building to get at the root causes of international terrorism and when you have known associates of Osama like Mahfouz who married his sister and the myriad of other nefarious bastards being involved in BCCI the link to international terrorism, the networks of financing and arming them becomes irrefutable. With the Internet we are getting word out to the public by sidestepping the corporate media.

If the BFEE goes down the rest of it will just be mop up IMO.

[seemslikeadream]

55. Arabic sign caused BCCI doubt

The Bank of England's Governor in the 1970s expressed doubts about registering the Bank of Credit and Commerce International as a UK bank when he noticed its branch on the corner of Wigmore Street and James Street had a sign written only in Arabic.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/business/articles/timid74858?source=

[seemslikeadream]

57. Bank told to release BCCI files

The Bank of England has lost an appeal to keep documents relating to the BCCI banking scandal under wraps.

The Court of Appeal ruled that it must release 10 files of letters between the BoE abd its lawyers relating to the collapse of BCCI in 1991.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3524981.stm