vault backup: 2026-09-23 17:56:02

60 - PLACES/CITIES/Dubai.md

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+---
+category: "City"
+tags:
+  - City
+  - UAE
+  - BCCI
+  - PersianGulf
+  - IranContra
+  - Arms
+summary: "Trading emirate of the United Arab Emirates whose ruling family was among BCCI's ostensible Arab owners, and through which a 1985 BCCI-backed TOW missile deal with Iran was channeled."
+location: "Dubai, United Arab Emirates"
+created: 2026-09-23
+updated: 2026-09-23
+---
+
+Dubai is one of the seven emirates of the [[United Arab Emirates]] and its principal trading city, on the coast of the [[Persian Gulf]]. Its ruler, [[Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum]], joined [[Zayed bin Sultan AL-Nahayan|Sheikh Zayed]] of [[Abu Dhabi]] in founding the federation in 1971. The ruling family of Dubai was among the Gulf families named as owners of the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) in its early years, and the bank's protocol department in [[Karachi]] served visiting rulers from Dubai and Abu Dhabi.[^1][^2][^3]
+
+### Oil and the Federation
+
+In the 19th century Dubai was one of the Trucial States that signed agreements with Britain under which they undertook not to cede territory except to the [[United Kingdom]] and not to deal with foreign governments without British consent, in return for British protection. Pearling sustained the coast into the early 20th century, until the depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s and the Japanese cultured pearl ruined the industry. Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, de facto ruler of Dubai from 1939, replaced pearling revenue by entering the shipping business, and in 1969 Dubai began exporting oil.[^1]
+
+After Britain announced in early 1968 that it would withdraw from the Gulf by the end of 1971, Zayed and Rashid met on February 18, 1968, at Al Samha, near the south-western boundary of Dubai, and from February 25 to 27, 1968, the rulers of nine Gulf states met in Dubai in a constitutional conference that agreed eleven points as the basis for a "Federation of the Arab Emirates." On July 18, 1971, the rulers of six of the seven Trucial States decided to form a union, and the United Arab Emirates was formally established on December 2, 1971, with Dubai among its six founding emirates.[^1][^2]
+
+### BCCI
+
+A record of BCCI's shareholders drawn from [[Bank of America]] files as of September 30, 1977, listed [[ICIC]] as majority owner with 50.1 percent, Bank of America with 30 percent, and as the largest Arab owner "Majid Al-Futaim of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates at just 4 percent," with members of the Abu Dhabi ruling family holding 3.4 percent. The Senate report of [[John Kerry]] and [[Hank Brown]] concluded that the list showed that "the Pakistanis actually owned BCCI at a time when to the outside world, the bank was ostensibly owned by oil-rich Middle Eastern Arabs, including the ruling families of Bahrain, Sharjah, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, as well as that of Abu Dhabi."[^3]
+
+[[Nazir Chinoy]], who served with BCCI in Pakistan from 1978 to 1982, told the Senate that the protocol department run by [[Sani Ahmed]] employed about 120 people in 1978, whose job was "to establish and further the rapport with the sheiks of and ruling families of Dubai and Abu Dhabi." He said: "Ninety-percent of the time, the guests were from Abu Dhabi and Dubai; occasionally, Oman, and the other emirates. They would come for shooting at the Game Reserves." Cash for the visits, 5 million rupees at a time, "would be carried out in steel trunks."[^3]
+
+### The TOW Missile Invoice
+
+Documents obtained by the Senate subcommittee included a pro forma invoice of November 21, 1985, for 1,250 American-made TOW missiles, described as "lift trucks" for bank and customs purposes, supplied by [[B.R. & W. Industries]] and signed by [[Ben Banerjee]], together with BCCI telexes and letters showing the bank providing counter guarantees and letters of credit for the transaction in November and December 1985. The deal involved the government of [[Iran]] and its bank, [[Bank Melli]], and was "channeled through the Arabian Gate General Trading Co. of Dubai, United Arab Emirates." Chinoy confirmed to Senate staff that Banerjee banked with BCCI in London and was involved in "large dealings with Iran." At the trial of [[Michael Aspin]], his brother [[Leslie Aspin]] testified that the TOW sale was a legitimate sale authorized by the [[United States]] government as part of a 1984 to 1985 effort to ransom the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] officer [[William Buckley]], with the weapons to be moved from [[Portugal]] to Iran.[^4]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: United Arab Emirates, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "History," archived copy. https://web.archive.org/web/2024/https://www.mofa.gov.ae/en/the-uae/history
+[^2]: United Arab Emirates Government, "History," The Official Portal of the UAE Government, accessed September 23, 2026. https://u.ae/en/about-the-uae/history
+[^3]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 3, "The Origin and Early Years of BCCI." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/03hist.htm
+[^4]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 11, "BCCI, The CIA and Foreign Intelligence." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/11intel.htm

60 - PLACES/CITIES/Frankfurt.md

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+---
+category: "City"
+tags:
+  - City
+  - Germany
+  - BCCI
+  - SeriousFraudOffice
+  - Extradition
+alias:
+  - Frankfurt, Germany
+  - Frankfurt am Main
+summary: "German city where Abbas Gokal, principal of the Gulf Group and chief defendant in the Serious Fraud Office's BCCI prosecution, was arrested aboard a New York flight in July 1994."
+location: "Frankfurt am Main, Germany"
+created: 2026-09-23
+updated: 2026-09-23
+---
+
+Frankfurt is a city in [[Germany]]. On July 18, 1994, [[Abbas Gokal]], the principal of the Geneva-based [[Gulf Group]] and the main target of the [[Serious Fraud Office]]'s investigation of the Gulf Group's loans from the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI), was arrested aboard an aircraft at Frankfurt during a refuelling stop on a flight from [[Pakistan]] to [[New York City|New York]].[^1]
+
+### Arrest of Abbas Gokal
+
+The Serious Fraud Office had opened its inquiry into BCCI's loans to the Gulf Group in September 1992. During the early part of the investigation only one or two of the potential defendants occasionally visited countries that had extradition treaties with Britain, and the investigating team prepared papers detailing the conspiracy to be used if any of them did. On July 14, 1994, the [[City of London Police]] received information that Gokal was about to fly to New York; according to the account published in *Accountancy Age*, he "hoped to cut a deal there to gain immunity from prosecution in exchange for information about US nationals." Over the next day the police confirmed the flight details and planned to intercept the aircraft when it landed at Frankfurt to refuel, and the SFO asked the German police to arrest him.[^1]
+
+When the aircraft landed on Monday, July 18, passengers were asked to disembark, but no one matching Gokal's description appeared. Detective Sergeant [[Doug Reeman]], who had flown to Germany for the arrest, went aboard and found Gokal sitting in first class with his wife. He was arrested and held in a German prison pending extradition. After his extradition he was remanded to [[HM Prison Brixton|Brixton prison]], and in February 1995 he was charged with conspiracy to account falsely and conspiracy to defraud. His trial at the [[Old Bailey]] began in September 1996 and lasted 122 days; on May 8, 1997, he was sentenced to fourteen years for his part in a 1.2 billion dollar fraud, then the heaviest sentence obtained by the Serious Fraud Office.[^1]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: Workman, Rik. "On the trail of Gokal," *Accountancy Age,* May 23, 1997. https://accountancyage.com/1997/05/23/on-the-trail-of-gokal/

60 - PLACES/CITIES/Geneva.md

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+---
+category: "City"
+tags:
+  - City
+  - Switzerland
+  - Banking
+  - BankingSecrecy
+  - BCCI
+  - MoneyLaundering
+summary: "Swiss banking city, seat of BCCI's secretly held affiliate Banque de Commerce et de Placements and of the Gokal brothers' Gulf Group, whose BCCI loans led to a fourteen-year sentence for Abbas Gokal."
+location: "Geneva, Switzerland"
+created: 2026-09-23
+updated: 2026-09-23
+---
+
+Geneva is a city in western [[Switzerland]] and one of the country's banking centers. It was the seat of the [[Banque de Commerce et de Placements]] (BCP), an affiliate the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) held in secret, and of the [[Gulf Group]] of the [[Gokal brothers]], a shipping group whose borrowing from BCCI was the subject of a 1.2 billion dollar fraud prosecution in [[London]]. The report of Senators [[John Kerry]] and [[Hank Brown]] listed the sale of BCP after BCCI's closure among the matters that required further investigation.[^1][^2][^3]
+
+### Swiss Bank Regulation
+
+The first attempt at federal regulation of Swiss banks, a bill drafted in 1916, was set aside until the Depression. The collapse of the Banque de Genève in 1931 and the crisis of the Schweizerische Volksbank, which received a government bailout of 100 million francs in 1933, led to the Federal Banking Act, which came into force on March 1, 1935, and which a later finance minister called "a child of necessity."[^4]
+
+### Banque de Commerce et de Placements
+
+The Senate report described BCP as one of the "affiliated and related entities" that BCCI used as its losses grew, alongside [[ICIC]] in [[Grand Cayman]], the [[National Bank of Oman]] and the [[Kuwait International Finance Company|Kuwaiti Investment Finance Corporation]].[^5] BCP was headed by [[Alfred Hartmann]], whom the report called one of BCCI's key "rent-a-faces." [[Bruce Rappaport]], an Israeli-born Swiss businessman investigated in 1987 by an independent counsel, whom the report named as Robert McKay, over activities on behalf of the former [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] director [[William J. Casey]], a frequent golfing partner, placed Hartmann on the board of his [[Intermaritime Bank]] of Geneva and New York.[^6] Aijaz Afridi, one of two long-time BCCI officials placed at [[First American Bank|First American]] New York who continued to draw benefits from BCCI while employed there, "had previously worked for another secretly-controlled BCCI entity in Switzerland, Banque de Commerce et de Placement of Geneva," and "was placed at the First American through [[Agha Hasan Abedi|Abedi]]'s intervention," according to the report.[^7]
+
+BCP was sold to the [[Cukorova Group]] of [[Turkey]] within weeks of BCCI's closure in July 1991. The Senate report stated that Cukorova, through its subsidiary [[Entrade]], had been involved with the [[BNL Scandal|Banca Nazionale del Lavoro]] in sales to [[Iraq]], and that the sale, made "just weeks after BCCI's closure" and "prior to due diligence being conducted," "raises questions as to whether a prior relationship existed between BCCI and Cukorova, and Cukorova's intentions in making the purchase." It noted that Cukorova had also applied within the past year to buy a New York bank. It recommended further investigation by Swiss authorities and the [[Federal Reserve Bank of New York|Federal Reserve New York]].[^3]
+
+### Capcom and Paten Holdings
+
+In the laundering of funds deposited at BCCI by [[Manuel Noriega]] through the commodities firm [[Capcom]], 2.6 million dollars "was paid to a coded account at the [[Trade Development Bank]] in Geneva, Switzerland." [[Paten Holdings]], a Panamanian company that made loans to the Capcom directors Magness and Romrell and was used on May 23, 1985, to raise Capcom's capital base from 10 million to 25 million pounds, was "operated out of Geneva by Mme. Cecile Ringenberg, and again, secretly owned by" Capcom's managing director, [[Syed Ziauddin Ali Akbar]].[^8]
+
+### The Gulf Group and Mohammed Hammoud
+
+The [[Serious Fraud Office]] opened its inquiry into BCCI's loans to the Geneva-based Gulf Group in September 1992; its team examined and compiled documents at a police warehouse in Geneva. Its principal defendant, [[Abbas Gokal]], was arrested at [[Frankfurt]] in July 1994 and sentenced to fourteen years in May 1997.[^2] The Lebanese businessman [[Mohammed Hammoud]], a BCCI front man who bought the shares in First American held by [[Clark Clifford]] and [[Robert Altman]], allegedly died in Geneva in 1990 while visiting his doctor, and was buried in [[Beirut]]; the Senate report recorded that insurance companies reportedly refused to pay on his life policy "because Hammoud's corpse was found to be several inches shorter than the height recorded at his last medical examination."[^9]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 1, "Executive Summary." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/01exec.htm
+[^2]: Workman, Rik. "On the trail of Gokal," *Accountancy Age,* May 23, 1997. https://accountancyage.com/1997/05/23/on-the-trail-of-gokal/
+[^3]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* appendices, "Matters for Further Investigation," item 13. https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/24appendic.htm
+[^4]: "A brief history of Swiss banking oversight and its scandals," SWI swissinfo.ch, accessed September 23, 2026. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-position/a-brief-history-of-swiss-banking-oversight-and-its-scandals/91762180
+[^5]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 4, "BCCI's Criminality." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/04crime.htm
+[^6]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 11, "BCCI, The CIA and Foreign Intelligence." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/11intel.htm
+[^7]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 7, "BCCI in the United States, Part Two: Acquisition, Consolidation, and Consequences." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/07later.htm
+[^8]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 21, "Capcom." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/21capcom.htm
+[^9]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 15, "Mohammed Hammoud: BCCI's Flexible Front-Man." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/15hammoud.htm

60 - PLACES/CITIES/Karachi.md

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+---
+category: "City"
+tags:
+  - City
+  - Pakistan
+  - BCCI
+  - Sindh
+summary: "Southern port city of Pakistan and capital of Sindh province, where Agha Hasan Abedi lived and BCCI kept its Pakistani branch, files and protocol department."
+location: "Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan"
+created: 2026-09-23
+updated: 2026-09-23
+---
+
+Karachi is the southern port city of [[Pakistan]] and the provincial capital of [[Sindh]].[^1][^2] After partition in 1947 it was one of the growing cities, with [[Lahore]], in which Muslim professionals from northern [[India]] settled and formed what the [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate report]] called "a clannish class of Muslim professionals who kept themselves apart from other Pakistanis." The report placed [[Agha Hasan Abedi]], founder of [[United Bank Limited]] and the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI), within that class.[^3] BCCI's internal correspondence reached Abedi in Karachi in the 1970s, and he died there, at the [[Aga Khan University Hospital|Aga Khan Hospital]], on August 5, 1995.[^4][^5]
+
+### BCCI in Karachi
+
+BCCI's protocol department, which served the ruling family of [[Abu Dhabi]] and other Gulf visitors, was run by [[Sani Ahmed]] under Abedi's direction and was housed in Karachi in a separate building opposite Abedi's house. [[Nazir Chinoy]], who arrived at BCCI Pakistan in 1978, told Senate staff that it then employed about 120 people, whose job was "to establish and further the rapport with the sheiks of and ruling families of Dubai and Abu Dhabi."[^3] Begum Asghari Rahim, who according to BCCI officials in Pakistan had recruited young women from villages for the Al-Nahyan family since Abedi's United Bank years, took 50 to 60 of them at a time to department stores in Lahore and Karachi to be outfitted, spending as much as 100,000 dollars at a time.[^6]
+
+On January 30, 1978, the BCCI officer [[Abdus Sami]] wrote a memorandum in Washington to Abedi in Karachi on the "situation of acquisition of FGB," reporting that the BCCI group had bought 17.5 percent of [[Financial General Bankshares]] and had commitments or control over 23 to 24 percent, and that a meeting was needed between "our friend," [[Bert Lance]], and the Middendorf group. The [[Federal Reserve Board|Federal Reserve]] later found the memorandum in BCCI files in Abu Dhabi, to which it had been moved from BCCI's files in Karachi. The Senate report cited it against the account of [[Clark Clifford]] that he had not been involved in the takeover plan in January 1978.[^4][^7] On February 12, 1978, *[[Washington Post|The Washington Post]]* reported: "In recent weeks, Lance was in Karachi, Pakistan, and sources say the trip was in connection with his dealings with Abedi." Lance, no longer in government, made the trip on an official [[United States]] diplomatic passport.[^8]
+
+In 1979, with Pakistan's commercial bank lending capped by [[World Bank]] credit ceilings, Abedi and [[Swaleh Naqvi]] arranged, according to Chinoy, for 50 million dollars to be placed with BCCI Pakistan through BCCI's Kuwaiti affiliate [[Kuwait International Finance Company|KIFCO]]: "I have a feeling that KIFCO got the money from Caymans. In any case, Kifco placed the money with BCCI Karachi." BCCI reported the deposit to the central bank, which reported a 50 million dollar increase in Pakistan's dollar reserves to the World Bank. A New York indictment of July 29, 1992, put the total at 100 million dollars.[^9] The report also found that BCCI paid for years the personal expenses in [[London]] of Jam Sadiq Ali, the highest-ranking official of Sindh, who defended BCCI and Abedi after its collapse.[^9]
+
+The [[Chicago Mercantile Exchange]] found that on October 29, 1987, six receipts totaling 4.84 million dollars arrived in the account at [[Capcom]] Futures of Mohammed Zaheer, brother of Capcom Futures president M. Saghir, and that 4.80 million dollars was paid out the next day. An investigative firm retained by the exchange found that Zaheer "worked in a service station in Karachi, Pakistan" in a position "not very high"; Capcom described him to the exchange as "a self-employed auto dealer with a dealership in Karachi, Pakistan." Gerald Beyer, a vice president of the exchange, told the Senate subcommittee: "I was certain that it involved drug money and laundering of money. But there was no way we could prove that."[^10]
+
+### Later Events
+
+In 1986 and 1987 the buyer [[Arshad Pervez]], seeking maraging steel for Pakistan's nuclear program, gave a research project of Karachi University's engineering program as one of its possible end uses.[^11] When [[Zia ul-Haq]] was killed on August 17, 1988, the army was deployed at government installations in the capital and in Karachi.[^1]
+
+On the day [[Benazir Bhutto]] returned to Pakistan in October 2007, a double suicide attack on her motorcade through Karachi killed about 130 people. After her assassination on December 27, 2007, four people died in protests in Karachi and more than 100 cars were burned.[^2]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: Barnetson, Denholm. "President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, U.S. Ambassador Arnold Raphel and...," United Press International, August 17, 1988. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1988/08/17/President-Mohammad-Zia-ul-Haq-US-Ambassador-Arnold-Raphel-and/3467587793600/
+[^2]: "Benazir Bhutto killed in attack," BBC News, December 27, 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7161590.stm
+[^3]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 3, "The Origin and Early Years of BCCI" (citing staff interviews with Nazir Chinoy, March 1992). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/03hist.htm
+[^4]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 6, "BCCI in the United States: Initial Entry and FGB and NBG Takeovers." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/06early.htm
+[^5]: "Key Figure In International Bank Scandal Dies At 74," Associated Press, *The Spokesman-Review,* August 6, 1995. https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1995/aug/06/key-figure-in-international-bank-scandal-dies-at/
+[^6]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 4, "BCCI's Criminality," section "Prostitution" (citing staff interview with Nazir Chinoy). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/04crime.htm
+[^7]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 13, "Clark Clifford and Robert Altman." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/13clifford.htm
+[^8]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 16, "BCCI and Georgia Politicians" (citing John Berry, "Lance Tied to Bank's Takeover," *The Washington Post*, February 12, 1978, and Michael Sniffen, Associated Press, March 27, 1978). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/16ga.htm
+[^9]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 5, "BCCI's Relationship with Foreign Governments, Central Banks, and International Organizations," section "Pakistan" (citing staff interview with Nazir Chinoy, March 9, 1992, and Chinoy testimony, S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 4, pp. 368-369). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/05foreign.htm
+[^10]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 21, "Capcom." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/21capcom.htm
+[^11]: *United States v. Pervez*, 871 F.2d 310 (3d Cir. 1989), No. 88-1109, decided March 6, 1989. https://static.case.law/f2d/871/cases/0310-01.json

60 - PLACES/CITIES/Tampa, Florida.md

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+---
+category: "City"
+tags:
+  - City
+  - Florida
+  - UnitedStates
+  - BCCI
+  - MoneyLaundering
+  - USCustoms
+alias:
+  - Tampa
+summary: "Gulf coast city in Florida where the 1988 Operation C-Chase indictment of BCCI was brought, and whose federal prosecutors the Senate found had missed the bank's wider crimes."
+location: "Tampa, Florida, United States"
+created: 2026-09-23
+updated: 2026-09-23
+---
+
+Tampa is a city on [[Tampa Bay]] in [[Hillsborough County, Florida|Hillsborough County]], [[Florida]]. Its federal prosecutors brought the October 1988 indictment that followed [[Operation C-Chase]], the [[U.S. Customs]] undercover money laundering operation against officers of the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI), and in January 1990 accepted the bank's guilty plea. The Senate report of [[John Kerry]] and [[Hank Brown]] later found that the prosecutors in Tampa had failed to recognize evidence of BCCI's other crimes.[^1][^2]
+
+### Early History
+
+A local account published in *The Florida Review* in 1911 by [[W. B. Powell]] recorded that the first permanent white families in Tampa were soldiers and their families brought by the Indian wars, and that in 1843 a town site a mile square, "known as the Fort Brooke Reservation," was laid off and Congress asked to designate it. Saw mills were built in 1845 and 1847. Tampa was incorporated in 1857 and Capt. [[James McKay (Tampa)|James McKay]] was elected mayor; Powell wrote that ninety-seven votes were cast although "there were not ninety-seven voters in Tampa at that time," and that there were "charges of fraud and ballot-box-stuffing." After the Civil War, according to the same account, only three new houses were built in Tampa between 1873 and 1876. During the [[Spanish-American War]] of 1898 Tampa was the point of embarkation of the army for [[Cuba]], and 30,000 men passed through the city. Powell put its population in 1911 at 51,000.[^3]
+
+### Operation C-Chase and the BCCI Prosecution
+
+Customs Special Agent [[Robert Mazur]], working undercover as "Robert Musella," testified that he opened an account at BCCI because it was the only bank with which he was familiar that had international branches. The Senate report recorded that "After Mazur checked with local prosecutors in Tampa and discovered that the bank showed up in another drug-related investigation, his suspicions were heightened." On April 6, 1988, a Customs memorandum stated that it was the opinion of the United States Attorney's office in Tampa that "probative evidence exists to establish corporate criminality against BCCI as an institution," and that current plans were "to indict BCCI as an institution under the provisions of the RICO statutes"; a second memorandum repeated the recommendation on May 10, 1988. The [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]] did not approve a racketeering prosecution. The United States Attorney for Tampa, [[Robert Genzman]], told the Senate subcommittee: "we believed that RICO charges would have added nothing, and would have greatly complicated the case ... There was simply insufficient evidence to support such a sweeping international forfeiture."[^1]
+
+The Senate report concluded that "it is clear now, and should have been clear as of the date of the C-Chase indictment against BCCI in October 1988, that BCCI represented much more than a drug money laundering case," and that the office in Tampa "then made its second strategic mistake as it allowed the bank to plead out while prosecuting the individual bankers." BCCI "mounted a $20 million defense in Florida and provided for the legal costs and living expenses of its former employees throughout their trials," a strategy the report described as designed to prevent the government from getting defendants to "flip." At one pretrial hearing Assistant United States Attorney [[Mark Jackowski]] appeared alone for the government against 23 lawyers for BCCI. In January 1990 the bank pleaded guilty and paid "what was then the largest fine ever imposed on a financial institution in a money-laundering case," 14 million dollars.[^1] The report found that the plea agreement "kept BCCI alive, and had the effect of discouraging BCCI's officials from telling the U.S. what they knew about BCCI's larger criminality, including its ownership of First American," and that in 1988 and 1989 the public relations firm [[Hill and Knowlton]] ran a campaign for BCCI designed "to put the best face possible on the Tampa drug money laundering indictments."[^2] After the plea, several members of Congress criticized it as too lenient; the Senate report recorded that the BCCI lawyer [[E. Lawrence Barcella Jr.|Lawrence Barcella]] met Senator [[Dennis DeConcini]], one of the critics, to persuade him that BCCI was not a corrupt institution.[^4]
+
+Mazur told the subcommittee that after the arrests records had been "seized from BCCI in Miami, from the homes of several officers in Miami, from the BCCI offices in London and Paris, from the homes of traffickers," but that "very little resources of those that were available could be used to deal with those matters because of the tremendous resources that were needed just to attend to pretrial motions and the upcoming trial in Tampa." Jackowski told the subcommittee that the grand jury investigation of BCCI had been suspended "due to a lack of available leads and the press of the upcoming trial." In April 1991 Mazur resigned from the Customs Service in a letter to Commissioner [[Carol Hallett]] that referred to "the deplorable conditions in Tampa"; a memorandum by Jackowski attached to the letter, expressing his own unhappiness with the handling of the case, was withheld from the subcommittee by the Justice Department.[^1]
+
+*[[Time]]* reported on July 29, 1991, that the Justice Department's main probe of BCCI was "being handled by a sole Assistant U.S. Attorney in Tampa, who has recently been assigned another major case."[^5] Among its findings, the Senate report stated:[^1]
+
+- "Federal prosecutors in Tampa handling the 1988 drug money laundering indictment of BCCI failed to recognize the importance of information they received concerning BCCI's other crimes, including its apparent secret ownership of First American."
+- "Justice Department personnel in Washington, Miami, and Tampa actively obstructed and impeded Congressional attempts to investigate BCCI in 1990, and this practice continued to some extent until William P. Barr became Attorney General in late October, 1991."
+- "Justice Department personnel in Washington, Miami and Tampa obstructed and impeded attempts by New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau to obtain critical information concerning BCCI in 1989, 1990, and 1991, and in one case, a federal prosecutor lied to Morgenthau's office concerning the existence of such material."
+
+In the House of Commons debate on the [[Bingham Report]] on November 6, 1992, [[Alistair Darling]] said that "Alarm bells should also have rung in respect of the Tampa indictment," and quoted Bingham's finding that involvement in drug money "could scarcely have eluded a competent and diligent banker ... particularly if he had branches in Panama and agencies in Florida."[^6]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 8, "BCCI and Law Enforcement: The Justice Department and the US Customs Service." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/08just.htm
+[^2]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 1, "Executive Summary." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/01exec.htm
+[^3]: Powell, W. B. "Tampa: 'Split Wood for Quick Fires,'" *The Florida Review,* 1911, excerpted in "Tampa, Florida," *Exploring Florida,* Florida Center for Instructional Technology, University of South Florida. https://fcit.usf.edu/florida/docs/t/tampa.htm
+[^4]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 17, "BCCI's Lawyers and Lobbyists." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/17law.htm
+[^5]: Beaty, Jonathan, and S. C. Gwynne. "B.C.C.I.: The Dirtiest Bank of All," *Time,* July 29, 1991, p. 8 of the online edition. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,973481-8,00.html
+[^6]: House of Commons, "BCCI (Bingham Report)," *Hansard,* November 6, 1992, vol. 213, cc. 523-594. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1992/nov/06/bcci-bingham-report