The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Gokal brothers.md

category	tags	summary	relations
Business & Finance	Person BCCI CIA	The Gokal brothers, Abbas Gokal, Murtaza Gokal, and Mustafa Gokal, were Pakistani businessmen who ran the Gulf Group, a London-based shipping company.	type with fn head_of Gulf Group 1 type with reverse start fn investigated Serious Fraud Office true 1992-09 5

The Gokal brothers, Abbas Gokal, Murtaza Gokal, and Mustafa Gokal, were Pakistan businessmen who ran the Gulf Group, a London-based shipping company.¹ They were closely associated with Agha Hasan Abedi and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, and, according to the journalists Jonathan Beaty and S. C. Gwynne, were BCCI's largest debtor.¹

Business Operations and BCCI Connections

The Gokal brothers used BCCI money to build their shipping empire, chartering more ships in one year than China and India combined during their heyday.² Their loans from BCCI topped out at $831 million in 1990 and were never repaid, contributing significantly to BCCI's financial problems.²

Mustafa Gokal was named Pakistan's minister for shipping, a position facilitated by Abedi, highlighting the intertwined relationship between BCCI and the Pakistani government.³ The Gokal brothers were also used by BCCI as a front for various transactions, including an attempt to acquire Chelsea National Bank in New York City in 1975.⁴

Prosecution

The Serious Fraud Office opened its inquiry into BCCI's loans to the Gulf Group in September 1992. The brothers, then based in Geneva, left for Pakistan, which had no extradition treaty with Britain, before Swiss police raided the group's offices. Abbas Gokal was arrested at a refuelling stop in Frankfurt on July 18, 1994, while flying to New York, and in November 1994 he agreed to extradition; British arrest warrants had also been issued for Mustafa and Murtaza.⁵⁶ After a 122-day trial at the Old Bailey, Abbas was convicted in April 1997 of conspiracy to account falsely and conspiracy to defraud, and on May 8, 1997, he was sentenced to fourteen years; prosecutors put the fraudulent loans at 1.2 billion dollars.⁵⁷

Footnotes

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1. Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 9. ↩︎

2. Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI. New York: Random House, 1993, pp. 139-140. ↩︎

3. Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 315. ↩︎

4. Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 11. ↩︎

5. "On the trail of Gokal," Accountancy Age, May 23, 1997. https://accountancyage.com/1997/05/23/on-the-trail-of-gokal/ ↩︎

6. Saadawi, Danah. "BCCI chief debtor agrees to extradition," United Press International, November 2, 1994. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1994/11/02/BCCI-chief-debtor-agrees-to-extradition/2453783752400/ ↩︎

7. "Gokal sentenced to 14 years for BCCI fraud," The Irish Times, May 9, 1997. https://www.irishtimes.com/business/gokal-sentenced-to-14-years-for-bcci-fraud-1.70650 ↩︎