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Jordanian grain trader close to King Hussein whom Atlanta prosecutors planned to indict in the BNL case in 1991 and who was named instead as an unindicted co-conspirator after the State Department noted his connections. | Amman, Jordan | 2026-09-21 | 2026-09-21 |
Wafai Dajani is a businessman of Amman, owner of Amman Resources, Wafai Dajani and Sons, Arab Holdings, and Aqaba Packing. His brother was Jordan's minister of the interior, his family had been the Jordanian agent of Mobil since 1921, he had formerly worked for Ghaith Pharaon, and he had a joint venture with Comet Rice of Houston. Representative Henry B. Gonzalez described him as central to the smooth running of the Commodity Credit Corporation Iraq Program for Iraq, which the Atlanta branch of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro financed.1
The Atlanta prosecutors' draft of the indictment in the BNL Scandal named him as a defendant. On February 28, 1991, the day the indictment was returned, a Department of State memorandum said the department had "no objections" to the indictment of anyone on the list and recorded "reservations about proceeding against him in light of his connections." He and Hussein Kamel, the son-in-law of Saddam Hussein, appeared in the indictment as unindicted co-conspirators. Gonzalez told the House on March 30, 1992, that the Department of Justice had discouraged the indictment of the Central Bank of Iraq and of "a prominent Jordanian with close ties to the King of Jordan" on grounds of foreign policy. The branch manager, Christopher Drogoul, testified that a "Mr. Dejani" had told him of Henry A. Kissinger: "Kissinger, of course, he said, is the architect of foreign policy in the United States. You know that."12
Footnotes
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Gonzalez, Henry B. Floor statements on the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, Congressional Record, House, March 30 and August 10, 1992. ↩︎
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"Bush's embarrassing Lavoro scandal," The Baltimore Sun, April 28, 1992; House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, hearing, Serial No. 103-95, testimony of Christopher Drogoul. ↩︎