Ghorbanifar and Khashoggi, two wealthy foreigners and sometime C.I.A. assets, were both involved in the October Surprise. They both were involved in the preliminary plans for the deal between the Republicans and Iranians. Both would play important roles in other important events and were involved in BCCI, one of the most corrupt enterprises of our day. The Kerry Committee report said both were US agents in the Iran/Contra scandal, Khashoggi as a banker and Ghobanifar as an arms dealer.
Ghorbanifar, and Saudi billionaire and arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, according to Wayne Madsen, had economic ties to George H.W. Bush and the Bin Ladens through Potomac Capital, a C.I.A. front which Bush established in Geneva in 1976. It was to be the template for BCCI. After that bank’s demise, Potomac again becme important and is in the same building as Ghobanifar’s Panamanian corporation, TopazLiberty, Inc. It was tied to BCCI and deeply involved in US operations in Central America in the 1980s. Ghorbanifar, an Iranian exile, has close ties with Iranian dissidents and the Neoconservative who want to invade Iran. He is considered a long-time Mossad agent of influence. Today, Ghorbanifar seems to be largely discredited due to the bad information he provided prior to the US invasion of Iraq.
Potomac was later investigated for possible imvolvement in Iran/Contra transactions. Some intelligence men complained that Bush sometimes used Potomac to fund domestic political operations.
Arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi would turn up time and again in major events. Khashoggi ( 1935- ) is a Turkoman Saudi billionaire who is a socialite in the West and Middle East and has been involved in arms dealing, legitimate business, and intelligence activities. His business career began in the 1950s, while a student at Chico State College, when he sold a fleet of US trucks to Mohammed bin Laden. His father was the Bin Ladens’ physician. There was an early connection with Barrick Gold in Canada. It was a spin-off of Barrick Resources International, a C.I.A. shell corporation set up by Kermit Roosevelt. Khashoggi brokered billions of dollars worth of arms deals for the Saudi government. His main firm seems to be Triad Holding Company. He runs the firm, but his two brothers are partners. There are other firms he has named Triad, including one chartered in Ohio. He has invested in real estate, oil, broadcasting, and any number of other ventures.
His greatest importance for this work flows from his ties to US intelligence operations. He clearly was a major C.I.A. asset, and probably worked for the Mossad as well. Beginning in the 1960s, he made made payoffs on behalf of the C.I.A. in the form of kickbacks from arms contracts.
Khashoggi became owner of the famous Safari Club in Kenya. Former Saudi intelligence chief openly talked about another Safari Club which met at this location in Kenya. It was a meeting of US, British, French, and Middle Eastern intelligence people who met there to discuss covert activities that were difficult to pull off as a result of the Watergate scandal.
Khashoggi admits he started the ball rolling in the October Surprise. He told Belgiam HUMO in 1987, "I am still convinced that it was all based on a grand idea. I cannot think of it in any other way: after all, I started the ball rolling.” In 1992, the Senate report on BCCI described him as one of the “principle foreign agents of the U.S.”
On September 24, 2007 , a Gulfstream II crash landed 40 miles from the capital of Yucatan. It was carrying 5.5 metric tons of cocaine from Venezuela was downed in Mexico. Ownership has been tied to Khashoggi and his lieutenant Wally Hilliard. Mohammed Atta and a colleague took flying lessons at Hilliard’s school. Hilliard was tied to the C.I.A. through Myron DuBain, who had worked for the OSS and C.I.A.. Du Bain became chairman of Fireman’s Fund, which took over a Hilliard company in the eighties. Later the European of Safety of Navigation investigated the matter because it was believed the same plane was used by the C.I.A. in renditions of suspected terrorists.
One of his business partners was Mario Renda of the Luchesse mafia family. Another business partner was former Chechen First Deputy Premier Khozh-Akhmed Nukhaev, who entered politics after a successful career in organized crime. His political philosophy is indistinguishable from that of Osama bin Laden. Another partner was banker Guillermo Hernandez-Cartaya who has been accused of involvement in arms for drugs trading through Columbia and Cuba and a botched kidnapping.
In 1983, Khashoggi established Five Star Trust to manage the assets of Ferdinand Marcos, but came under the control of the Bush family and was established on the Isle of Man in 1989. Some say the Bushes got Marcos’ gold and assets in return for granting him asylum. In the 1980s, he was a middle man for Oliver North’s deals with the Iranian mullahs. He borrowed much of the money for his part in the transactions from the notorious BCCI. The senior Bush pardoned him for his role in the Iran/Contra scandal. In 1983, Khashoggi established Five Star Trust to manage the assets of Ferdinand Marcos, but came under the control of the Bush family and was established on the Isle of Man in 1989. Some say the Bushes got Marcos’ gold and assets in return for granting him asylum. The senior Bush pardoned him for his role in the Iran/Contra scandal.
Counterterrorism expert Jean-Charles Brisard and British reporter Greg Palast write that Khasoggi attended a May, 1996 meeting at which Saudi Arabia bought off Osama bin Laden, in return for protecting his homeland. Turki al-Faisal, then head of intelligence, wass there as well as an unnamed bin Laden brother. Businessman Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, who bailed out George W. Bush’s Harken Energy was also present along with a representative of the Saudi Defense Ministry.
In the same year, Khashoggi represented Saudi Arabia in the Tashkent, Uzbekistan meetings on the formulation of twin pipelines through Afghanistan which was to involve Enron and Unocal. A 1991 Pentagon study, declassified in 2004, listed him as being involved in the drug trade with thee Columbians. He was described as a “narco-terrorist.”
He was also involved with the C.I.A. in the 1990s in efforts to support Bosnian Muslims. He has also entertained Muslim radicals believed to be tied to violence in Russia. In 2008, Indian press reports claim that he has given hundred of millions of dollars to businessman Hassan Ali Khan, who some think was tied to Dawood Ibrahim, the underworld kingpin who could have been behind the bloody attacks on Mumbai. Ibrahim was once a C.I.A. operative; his recent activities might be seen as an effort to settle old scores.
In the early 1960s he worked with Democratic National Chairman Edwin Pauley who was a partner of George H.W. Bush in Zapata Oil. Pauley taught Bush and Khashoggi how to launder money through Mexico, and this system was used by Bush to launder money for the Nixon campaigns of 1968 and 1972. He visited President Nixon several times.
Gus Greenspun, who had run guns for Israel in the late 1940s, provided Khashoggi with contacts that enabled him to do business with the State of Israel. There after, he was able to serve the C.I.A. as a “cut-out” for it in joint opertions with Israel. Cut-outs are necessary when the agency desires to engage in operations that are illegal or forbidden.
He made heavy contributions to the contributions to Nixon and Reagan.campaigns. In 1972, he secretly gave Nixon $1 million. Presumably he “accidentally” left the cash behind in a suitcase after visiting the president. He also left several million in Rebozo’s bank to be drained by the president’sw close friend. Beebe left $200,000 in the account. Al Ahram editor Mohammed Haykal claimed that Arabs pumped between $ 10 and 12 million into that campaign.. Teresa LaPore, deputy elections supervisor of Palm Beach County, who was moonlighting as a stewardess on Khashoggi’s private airplanes in the 1980s, designed the famous butterfly ballot that confused thousands into inadvertently voting for Pat Buchanan rather than than Albert Gore 2000. Some have reported that Khashoggi probably servd as a conduit for a great deal of off-shore money finding its way into the 2004 George W. Bush campaign.
Khashoggi is a resident of Monaco and a close friend of neoconservative leader Richard Perle, who also has a residence there. Adnan was the uncle of Dodi Fayed, After the death of Aristotle Onassis, Jackie Kennedy was briefly involved with him. He has invested in real estate, oil, broadcasting, and any number of other ventures. Once the richest man in the world, he is now down to his last $50 million and spends much time in Spain fighting litigation against him.
On July 4, 1999, an interesting meeting took place at his villa in Beaulieu , near Niece. Present were representatives of the Yeltysin crime family and people from the United States, Columbia, Venezuela, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Germany. Peter Dale Scott believes they comprise the “meta-group” that controls the international drug trade. They represented Al Qaeda, the revolutionary FARC in Columbia, the Turkish military, the Kosovo Liberation Army, Cuban and Russian military intellience, Saudi intelligence, and the C.I.A.. The first postwar meta-group was BCCI, and this group has some ties to its historical predecessor. BCCI inherited from American agent Kheshoggi the ability to broker deals with partners all around the world. Before, 1977, the US used him arrange trans-global transactions and move money. Congress, in that year, made it illegal for American corporations to make payments to foreignofficials. BCCI emerged to carry out that function and to laundere drug and intelligence money.
The meeting at Kheshoggi’s villa is claimed to be where a vew men also planned the Russian 9/11, the bombings of 1999. This story need not concern us. An American scholar at the Hoover Institution believes it was planned by people in the Putin administration to make him more popular. The Russian version, attributes the work to Russians tied to Far West Ltd. who happened to be anti-Putin. The firm is now known as Far West DDC and has headquarters in Dubai. They are part of what Russians call OPS, Organized Crime Society.
Since the early 1990s, then OPS, with the help of elements in the Russian military, have been moving drugs from Afghanistan to Europe. Some of the drug dealing tied to this group finances Islamic insurrections in Russia. Macedonia, and Kosovo. A reason for this may be that it is easier to move drugs in areas where governments are weak. From 2000 on, they have also moved Columbian drugs to Europe via Novorossiysk and St. Petersburg. So much heroin has been moved into Russia, that the government has had to act against OPS, resulting in a truce, sharing of profits, stabililization of the situation in Chechnia, and killing of some troublesome ethnic leaders.
Seven days after the 1999 meeting, Russian paratroopers seized the Pristina, Kosovo airport. The action was taken without the knowledge of the Russian Defense minister. The official position of the Russian government was to support Serbia against the Islamic extremists in the KLA. After some debate, the Russias troops were permitted to remain until 2003, and that airstrip was for that time the main outlet for Russian drugs. Anton Surikov, a Russian scholar with C.I.A. ties and links to Putin’s opponents, comfirmed in 2006 that the seizing of the strip had been planned at the Beaulieu meeting and arranged in conjunction with the KLA.
Showing posts with label BCCI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BCCI. Show all posts
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Covert Finances: Pinnacle and After
One of the successors of BCCI was Pinnacle Banc Group, whose flagship is the First Bank of Cicero, Illinois. Fof a long time, the key figure behind that bank was Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, who was also head of IOR, the Vatican Bank. Under him, an Italian criminal syndicate known as P-2 looted the Vatican Bank. Pinnacle has also been deeply involved in the financial schemes of Roger D’ Onofrio, a former C.I.A. paymaster in Italy. D’Onofrio was charged in Italy in 1995 of dealing in stolen drugs, nuclear triggers, other radioactive materials, US securities, drugs, and arms. It is said that he also dealt in exceptionally high quality counterfeit currency. In the past he acted as a C.I.A. paymasters for operatives and business partners. According to Sherman Skolnich, John Tarullo, who is connected to the Cicero bank and wasonce a member of London Gold Pool helped the C.I.A. and several criminal organizations, and D’Onorio –who could well still be C.I.A.—transport stolen gold. He was murdered after Skolnich discussed these operations on a Chicago TV show.
The Cicero bank is also entangled in ventures with the C.I.A.’s Household International and Household Ban, Marcinkis, and the Giannini family. SISMI, Italian intelligence, is also involved in some of the C.I.A./Pinnacle ventures. Wallace Lieberman , a likely Mossad asset, was found near the Cicero bank in 1991. It was said that, on behalf of Israel, he was trying to shakedown the Pinnacle partners. Perhaps he was trying to obatain the release of Jonathan Pollard, an Israeli spy. Pollard’s family was in Chicago at the time, and Ariel Sharon had just been there. Subsequently his son, Barry, faced treason charges.
Enron and C.I.A.
When BCCI eventually collapsed, Enron became the C.I.A.’s chief vehicle for laundering money. Some Enron operations were to morph into Clearstream International, a bank that most likely has C.I.A. ties. Another C.I.A. front was Coopers and Lybrand, where many former agents can be found. Maria Carlucci, wife of former Deputy Director Frank Carlucci also worked there.
Clifford Baxter retired as vice chairman of Enron in May 2001. He was probably eased out because he had complained to Kenneth Lay about the creation of 2,800 partnerships where Enron debt could be parked, thus creating the impression that the firm was generating more revenue. Early in the morning of January 25, 2002, he was found dead in his Mercedes, dead of an apparently self-inflicted wound to the head. The Sugar Land police immediately labeled it a suicide as did the coroner, who did not wait for the results of a police investigation.
Baxter had made $30,000,000 in unloading his Enron stock and was in the process of upgrading to something bigger than his 72 fool yacht. There was no evidence presented that his fingerprints were on the typed suicide note or the spent shell casing. The autopsy suggested he may have fallen down to the left before his death. He was shot with rat shot, though one would wonder if someone with that much wealth would do his own exterminating. Days before, he was discussing the possible need for a bodyguard.e had agreed to testify before a Senate committee and a House Committee was also interesting in calling him.
If he was only going to testify about unorthodox accounting procedures and the use of off-shore partnerships, it is difficult to understand why his life was in danger or why he might commit suicide. All of this soon became part of the public record, and there was no way of getting details on the off-shore entities. If he knew anything about how the George W. Bush campaign financed its operations during the Florida electoral dispute, he might have been in some trouble. It is likely that the Bushes spent 40 million dollars from Carlos Lehder, founder of the Medellin drug cartel and that the money was laundered through Enron to James Baker III and Governor Marc Racicot. The Montana governor is said to have used the money to buy the assistance of south Florida Democratic leaders in preventing an effective recount.. The drug lord has been in a federal prison and then mysterious disappeared.
It is well known outside the United States that Enron was negotiating with the Taliban before September 11, 2001 over what Afghanistan would be paid to permit two pipelines bearing Caspian gas and oil to cross the country. Baxter may have been able to shed light on this and he could have been privy to Enron’s role in complex transactions aimed at propping up the sagging stock market. There was a close relationship between Enron and the C.I.A., with the C.I.A. loaning the firm a number of its agents. Some speculate that C.I.A. software was used to invest about $7 billion in missing Enron funds. Former German minister of Technology Andreas von Bulow has charged that there was about $15 billion in insider trading investment profits on the events of 911. Marc Racicot, former attorney general and governor of Montana, has been identified with the drug trade across the Canadian border int a Chinook Reservation, but key witnesses have turned up dead or were intimidated into silence.
Enron played a bigger role than another firm in election George W. Bush. Second in importance was Halliburton, particularly through its subsidiary of Kellogg, Brown ,and Root. This firm has had multiple linkages with the international drug trade, and it can only be assumed that it has played this role at the behest of the intelligence community. It played a major role in the drug trade through Turkey and Kurdistan and has close ties with the Russian underworld.
Eight years before its collapse , twenty C.I.A. agents were on loan to Enron. These agents trained other employees in intelligence matters, with a view to increasing interntaional sales."It was the C.I.A. trained employees and C.I.A. insider information that made it possible for Enron to force its will on the citizens of Dabhol," claimed a retired C.I.A. agent. The people of that part of India were almost forced to accept an electricity generating plant they did not want. This may just have been a case of using the C.I.A. in industrial espionage, a parctice that began with President George H. W. Bush. . Whether the corporation was tied to the government and the C.I.A. cannot be determined with any certainty.
Ken Lay was a Pentagon official under Nixon, and board member Frank Wisner, Jr.is son of a man who was present when the agency was created. The corporation was almost created by Bush Sr., in that it grew by capitalizing on his deregulation of energy. From the beginning, it funded right-wing think tanks and pursued national objectives by seeking to gain control of energy resources abroad. In return, it was rewarded with a huge contract as a result of the First Gulf War, Desert Storm. Enron has had a very close relationship with a technology services corporation named DynCorp. Founded in 1943, it has become a major public contractor, dealing with Pentagon, State Department, and F.B.I.. Herbert APug@ Winokur of Enron was its chairman for a time and former head of the C.I.A., James Wolsey served on its board. It is particularly active in Columbia, allegedly helping the C.I.A. and Pentagon root out the drug trade and drug crops.
In January, 2002, four of C.I.A. employees on loan from the agency
and a former F.B.I. agent formed Secure Solutions International, which worked on contract with Enron. David M. Cromley's, their leader, had been head of business analysis for Enron. One wonders if he ever used the government’s Echelon commuications’ monitoring program in this task or other C.I.A. tools. The Houston Chronicle claimed to have information that this was the case. Was this software used in parking assets off shore or in generating what former German Minister of Technology, Andreas von Bulow guestimated to be $15 billion in inside trader profits.
Apparently some Enron money was moved to the Cook Islands, because the Bush people wanted “A quick folding tent”that could be taken down almost without a trace. Some of this money was routed through Saudi-controlled Five Star Trust in Houston for use in the 2004 ele3ction. It was reported that $29,000,000 was used to pay techni C.I.A.ns to poses as Homeland Security and F.B.I. agents and go to various counties to adjust county-wide electronic voting mechanisms. Five Star Trust has been accused of also funnelling money to Osama bin Laden.
Catherine Austin Fitts is a former Reagan sub-cabinet member who was hired by the George H.W. Bush administration to deal with funds seized in various financial frauds, including BCCI. Her job was expanded to include tracking down missing federal money. By 1996, she was looking for $4.4 trillion dollars, much of which was stolen from HUD. In that year, she said the Ahonest people@ were removed from HUD and the Department of Justice set out to shut down her firm. She wondered how all that money could ever be laundered, and then she noted that J.P. Morgan-Case , Arthur Anderson, Lockheed, and Dyn Corp were heavily represented at Enron and that suddenly massive and unaccounted amounts of money started flowing through Enron. It was the perfect entity for money laundering with over 3000 subsidiaries. There were over 700 subsidiaries in the Caymen Islands alone. What occurred soon thereafter was the classic “pump and dump” operation on the Enron stock. It might be recalled that the operators tied to Ollie North were masters of pump and dump schemes. Operating through foreign entities, they would be hard to trace. She noted that the government’s dealing with the collapse of Enron was highly irregular.
Its imminent collapse was clear but none of the normal steps that should have been taken occurred before bankruptcy was filed. Enron and its accountant Arthur Anderson were permitted to shred documents at will. She assumes that many important documents are now under the protection of Swiss bank secrecy law. The firm was even permitted to have gold derivatives and bullion transferred at will. After the filing, no effort was made to seize cash payments for on-going government contracts. As almost any newspaper reader knows, the firm was also given a quarter of a billion dollars in tax rebates. Pitts noted that when Noriega was arrested, the US government used PROMIS software to track down and seize $2 billion in his assets. This was not done with Enron. The US government knew of the 700 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands and of other subcontracting firms there. The government of the Cayman Islands offered to help, but the Department of Justice never filed a request for assistance.
Fitts looked to the Senate investigation of the collapse for evidence that there was no real interest in getting at the truth. A professor who headed an internal Enron audit testified that no notes were taken of his meetings but that a very carefully written summary memo was produced afterward. She called him a typical “white shoes” respectable fellow who had no idea what was going on and was there to give the internal probe some legitimacy. The Senate did not press him. It treated Herbert “Pug” Winokor with kid gloves. He headed the Enron board’s finance committee and headed DynCorp. He said he had been lied to and they left it at that. She said Dyn Corp. uses the most advanced PROMIS software, has access to everyone’s bank account and other financial dealings, and and could quickly make anyone look like a criminal. She thought “Pug” was today’s J.Edgar Hoover. She is now past 80 and has lost all faith in government.
Former Enron CEO Ken Lay died of a heart attack on July 5, 2006 in Aspen. He had been convicted but not sentences for fraud. Dying before the sentencing meant that his assets , wherever they are secreted away, will remain with his family. While Lay wass alive and before the sentencing, a restitution order could have been found had prosecutors been able to find Judge Sim Lake, who had presided. On July 12, Neil Coulbeck 53, died a suicide in woods outsided London. He had been head of an Enron affiliate in Scotland and his information was considered essential in the UK case against Enron. There were complaints that he had been “hounded” by the F.B.I.. One would think that the F.B.I. would treat a potentially friendly witness better. The F.B.I. has recently been granted extraterritoriality rights in the UK.
Since the fall of BCCI, the C.I.A. has used a number of private banks to launder money. One was Hamilton Bankin Miami, which folded in 2006. It was said to handle money from drug and arms transactions as well as the stashes of crooked Latin American politicians. There are also C.I.A. fronts in the Cook Islands, and the George W. Bush campaign used a bank there in 2004. The advantage there is that there are no rules and banks can be disassembled over night.
The Cicero bank is also entangled in ventures with the C.I.A.’s Household International and Household Ban, Marcinkis, and the Giannini family. SISMI, Italian intelligence, is also involved in some of the C.I.A./Pinnacle ventures. Wallace Lieberman , a likely Mossad asset, was found near the Cicero bank in 1991. It was said that, on behalf of Israel, he was trying to shakedown the Pinnacle partners. Perhaps he was trying to obatain the release of Jonathan Pollard, an Israeli spy. Pollard’s family was in Chicago at the time, and Ariel Sharon had just been there. Subsequently his son, Barry, faced treason charges.
Enron and C.I.A.
When BCCI eventually collapsed, Enron became the C.I.A.’s chief vehicle for laundering money. Some Enron operations were to morph into Clearstream International, a bank that most likely has C.I.A. ties. Another C.I.A. front was Coopers and Lybrand, where many former agents can be found. Maria Carlucci, wife of former Deputy Director Frank Carlucci also worked there.
Clifford Baxter retired as vice chairman of Enron in May 2001. He was probably eased out because he had complained to Kenneth Lay about the creation of 2,800 partnerships where Enron debt could be parked, thus creating the impression that the firm was generating more revenue. Early in the morning of January 25, 2002, he was found dead in his Mercedes, dead of an apparently self-inflicted wound to the head. The Sugar Land police immediately labeled it a suicide as did the coroner, who did not wait for the results of a police investigation.
Baxter had made $30,000,000 in unloading his Enron stock and was in the process of upgrading to something bigger than his 72 fool yacht. There was no evidence presented that his fingerprints were on the typed suicide note or the spent shell casing. The autopsy suggested he may have fallen down to the left before his death. He was shot with rat shot, though one would wonder if someone with that much wealth would do his own exterminating. Days before, he was discussing the possible need for a bodyguard.e had agreed to testify before a Senate committee and a House Committee was also interesting in calling him.
If he was only going to testify about unorthodox accounting procedures and the use of off-shore partnerships, it is difficult to understand why his life was in danger or why he might commit suicide. All of this soon became part of the public record, and there was no way of getting details on the off-shore entities. If he knew anything about how the George W. Bush campaign financed its operations during the Florida electoral dispute, he might have been in some trouble. It is likely that the Bushes spent 40 million dollars from Carlos Lehder, founder of the Medellin drug cartel and that the money was laundered through Enron to James Baker III and Governor Marc Racicot. The Montana governor is said to have used the money to buy the assistance of south Florida Democratic leaders in preventing an effective recount.. The drug lord has been in a federal prison and then mysterious disappeared.
It is well known outside the United States that Enron was negotiating with the Taliban before September 11, 2001 over what Afghanistan would be paid to permit two pipelines bearing Caspian gas and oil to cross the country. Baxter may have been able to shed light on this and he could have been privy to Enron’s role in complex transactions aimed at propping up the sagging stock market. There was a close relationship between Enron and the C.I.A., with the C.I.A. loaning the firm a number of its agents. Some speculate that C.I.A. software was used to invest about $7 billion in missing Enron funds. Former German minister of Technology Andreas von Bulow has charged that there was about $15 billion in insider trading investment profits on the events of 911. Marc Racicot, former attorney general and governor of Montana, has been identified with the drug trade across the Canadian border int a Chinook Reservation, but key witnesses have turned up dead or were intimidated into silence.
Enron played a bigger role than another firm in election George W. Bush. Second in importance was Halliburton, particularly through its subsidiary of Kellogg, Brown ,and Root. This firm has had multiple linkages with the international drug trade, and it can only be assumed that it has played this role at the behest of the intelligence community. It played a major role in the drug trade through Turkey and Kurdistan and has close ties with the Russian underworld.
Eight years before its collapse , twenty C.I.A. agents were on loan to Enron. These agents trained other employees in intelligence matters, with a view to increasing interntaional sales."It was the C.I.A. trained employees and C.I.A. insider information that made it possible for Enron to force its will on the citizens of Dabhol," claimed a retired C.I.A. agent. The people of that part of India were almost forced to accept an electricity generating plant they did not want. This may just have been a case of using the C.I.A. in industrial espionage, a parctice that began with President George H. W. Bush. . Whether the corporation was tied to the government and the C.I.A. cannot be determined with any certainty.
Ken Lay was a Pentagon official under Nixon, and board member Frank Wisner, Jr.is son of a man who was present when the agency was created. The corporation was almost created by Bush Sr., in that it grew by capitalizing on his deregulation of energy. From the beginning, it funded right-wing think tanks and pursued national objectives by seeking to gain control of energy resources abroad. In return, it was rewarded with a huge contract as a result of the First Gulf War, Desert Storm. Enron has had a very close relationship with a technology services corporation named DynCorp. Founded in 1943, it has become a major public contractor, dealing with Pentagon, State Department, and F.B.I.. Herbert APug@ Winokur of Enron was its chairman for a time and former head of the C.I.A., James Wolsey served on its board. It is particularly active in Columbia, allegedly helping the C.I.A. and Pentagon root out the drug trade and drug crops.
In January, 2002, four of C.I.A. employees on loan from the agency
and a former F.B.I. agent formed Secure Solutions International, which worked on contract with Enron. David M. Cromley's, their leader, had been head of business analysis for Enron. One wonders if he ever used the government’s Echelon commuications’ monitoring program in this task or other C.I.A. tools. The Houston Chronicle claimed to have information that this was the case. Was this software used in parking assets off shore or in generating what former German Minister of Technology, Andreas von Bulow guestimated to be $15 billion in inside trader profits.
Apparently some Enron money was moved to the Cook Islands, because the Bush people wanted “A quick folding tent”that could be taken down almost without a trace. Some of this money was routed through Saudi-controlled Five Star Trust in Houston for use in the 2004 ele3ction. It was reported that $29,000,000 was used to pay techni C.I.A.ns to poses as Homeland Security and F.B.I. agents and go to various counties to adjust county-wide electronic voting mechanisms. Five Star Trust has been accused of also funnelling money to Osama bin Laden.
Catherine Austin Fitts is a former Reagan sub-cabinet member who was hired by the George H.W. Bush administration to deal with funds seized in various financial frauds, including BCCI. Her job was expanded to include tracking down missing federal money. By 1996, she was looking for $4.4 trillion dollars, much of which was stolen from HUD. In that year, she said the Ahonest people@ were removed from HUD and the Department of Justice set out to shut down her firm. She wondered how all that money could ever be laundered, and then she noted that J.P. Morgan-Case , Arthur Anderson, Lockheed, and Dyn Corp were heavily represented at Enron and that suddenly massive and unaccounted amounts of money started flowing through Enron. It was the perfect entity for money laundering with over 3000 subsidiaries. There were over 700 subsidiaries in the Caymen Islands alone. What occurred soon thereafter was the classic “pump and dump” operation on the Enron stock. It might be recalled that the operators tied to Ollie North were masters of pump and dump schemes. Operating through foreign entities, they would be hard to trace. She noted that the government’s dealing with the collapse of Enron was highly irregular.
Its imminent collapse was clear but none of the normal steps that should have been taken occurred before bankruptcy was filed. Enron and its accountant Arthur Anderson were permitted to shred documents at will. She assumes that many important documents are now under the protection of Swiss bank secrecy law. The firm was even permitted to have gold derivatives and bullion transferred at will. After the filing, no effort was made to seize cash payments for on-going government contracts. As almost any newspaper reader knows, the firm was also given a quarter of a billion dollars in tax rebates. Pitts noted that when Noriega was arrested, the US government used PROMIS software to track down and seize $2 billion in his assets. This was not done with Enron. The US government knew of the 700 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands and of other subcontracting firms there. The government of the Cayman Islands offered to help, but the Department of Justice never filed a request for assistance.
Fitts looked to the Senate investigation of the collapse for evidence that there was no real interest in getting at the truth. A professor who headed an internal Enron audit testified that no notes were taken of his meetings but that a very carefully written summary memo was produced afterward. She called him a typical “white shoes” respectable fellow who had no idea what was going on and was there to give the internal probe some legitimacy. The Senate did not press him. It treated Herbert “Pug” Winokor with kid gloves. He headed the Enron board’s finance committee and headed DynCorp. He said he had been lied to and they left it at that. She said Dyn Corp. uses the most advanced PROMIS software, has access to everyone’s bank account and other financial dealings, and and could quickly make anyone look like a criminal. She thought “Pug” was today’s J.Edgar Hoover. She is now past 80 and has lost all faith in government.
Former Enron CEO Ken Lay died of a heart attack on July 5, 2006 in Aspen. He had been convicted but not sentences for fraud. Dying before the sentencing meant that his assets , wherever they are secreted away, will remain with his family. While Lay wass alive and before the sentencing, a restitution order could have been found had prosecutors been able to find Judge Sim Lake, who had presided. On July 12, Neil Coulbeck 53, died a suicide in woods outsided London. He had been head of an Enron affiliate in Scotland and his information was considered essential in the UK case against Enron. There were complaints that he had been “hounded” by the F.B.I.. One would think that the F.B.I. would treat a potentially friendly witness better. The F.B.I. has recently been granted extraterritoriality rights in the UK.
Since the fall of BCCI, the C.I.A. has used a number of private banks to launder money. One was Hamilton Bankin Miami, which folded in 2006. It was said to handle money from drug and arms transactions as well as the stashes of crooked Latin American politicians. There are also C.I.A. fronts in the Cook Islands, and the George W. Bush campaign used a bank there in 2004. The advantage there is that there are no rules and banks can be disassembled over night.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Covert Finances: BCCI
BCCI, the Bank of Commerce and Credit International, was founded in the late seventies It facilitated the activities of world intelligence agencies, the C.I.A., and unsavory elements. We know tht Richard Helms of the C.I.A. supported its founding, and one person close to its leaders, said, "What I have been told this is that it wasn't a Pakistani bank at all. The guys behind the bank weren't Pakistani at all. The whole thing was a front." On the other hand Bob Crowley, a long-time C.I.A. covert ops leader, said that the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) had an important part in what he thought was essentially a massive ponzi scheme. He added that F. Lee Bailey fronted for it and tghat “God knows how many thoroughly rotten Congressmen” backed it. In the end, elder statesman Clark Clifford was paid to front for it and unwittingly take a fall.
In the beginning, 1972, the little bank was a front for British intelligence in Muslim lands, and later its role was vastly expanded. Joseph Trentino has written that BCCI emerged after members of the Safari Club, compised of various intelligence agencies, decided they needed their own bank .
BCCI was operated by reliable C.I.A. associates from Saudi Arabia and Central Asia, many of them Pakistanis, and it became the bank of choice for the agency. It had many layers and overalapping parts and seemed to be structured so its functions could not be monitored or regulated by governments. It relied heavily upon shell corporations and subsidiaries in lands where there were strong bank confidentiality laws. It bribedofficials in at least 71 countries. BCCI grew from a small Pakistani bank to the largest secret money network on earth. George H.W. Bush established an account there while still DCI and French police later found it when they raided BCCI. The bank was used by the mafia, all sorts of dictators, war lords, terrorists, skamsters, and criminals around the world. On June 4, 1992, The Houston Chronicle reported that Khalid bin Mahfouz , Osama bin Laden’s brother-n-law owned a large chunk of BCCI stock. He has numerous dealings with George W. Bush’s friend, James Bath. Thomas Kean, chairman of the 9/11 Commission was also a bin Mahfouz business partner. Prince Turki bin Faisal al-Saud, former head of Saudi intelligence, was another important investor. Jack Blum , a former Senate investigator, said, “This whole collection of people were wrapped up in the Bush crowd in Texas.”
It was involved in the arms and drugs trades, blackmailing politicians, and financing terrorism. It was closely tied the Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI, and played a central role in the drug trade. It was also the main conduit for financing the resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The Chinese Communists assisted the C.I.A., through BCCI, in helping the mujahedeen against the Soviets. BCCI also sent money to officers of international banks and banking regulatory agencies to further financial schemes; all of those, some say, prefigured the financial crisis of 2008.
In 1977 it began to infiltrate the U.S. banking system through the covert acquisition of banks. Agha Hasan Abedi, BCCI founder, arranged for some of his clients to purchase First American Bankshares, which had probably been a C.I.A. bank for decides. There were three other BCCI banks in the U.S. Jackson Stephens, then chair of Worthen Bank in Arkansas, played an important role bringing the bank to the US when he helped BCCI purchase First American. Doubtless, a good deal of drug money was laundered there. Eventually the ruling house of Abu Dhabi would own a substantial chunk of the bank.
A case can be made that Charles Keating had ties to the C.I.A., and a much stronger case can be made that the agency looted some S and Ls in the late 1980s and routed the proceeds through BCCI.
Some might remember that in 1990, Baltimore financier Robert Maxwell brought suite to obtain Bank of Maryland records. He claimed that his relationship with the bank was ended because he objected to the C.I.A.’s using the bank to issue illegal letters of credit to cover a covert operation. Two years later, the court ordered those records sealed. The case is interesting becaue it raises the question of whether the C.I.A. is essentially exempt from banking regulations.
BCCI operated through many layers of subsidiary entities and became the central bank for some countries and repaying leaders of those countries with bribes Pakistanis and Saudi seemed to be running it, but it is unknown who owned and controlled it. In some ways it was a giant Ponzi scheme, and its financial statements were less than transparent and honest. By the early eighties it owned banks in the US and around the world. Mohammed Hammond, who ran the Luxembourg branch also moved money for Hezballah. Manuel Noriega was instructed to route his money laundering through it, and it soon became his favorite bank’ s favorite bank. It operated at so many levels and through so many fronts that it was almost impossible to follow how it moved money. When Noriega was arrested, the US government was only able to trace the movement of $20 million of his money through BCCI’s labyrinths. BCCI was used to pay people on the C.I.A. payroll in Britain and it was used fund the insurgency against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.
BCCI was used by the C.I.A., Mossad, and many intelligence agencies as well as organized crime. It was a key conduit for funding the right wing militias in Central America. The full extent of C.I.A. involvement in the farious frauds perpetrated by the BCCI will never be known. At the least, it must have had knowledge of of these schemes and who was being bribed . Such information would have been invaluable.
A Senate committee eventually described it as “the largest criminal enterprise in history.” When reports of its wrong-doing surfaced, George W. Bush had Robert Mueller of the Justice Department investigate. Witnesses and files disappeared and lower level prosecutors complained of high level pressure to “lay off” Khalid bin Mahfouz, Osama bin Laden’s brother -in-law and likely bag man escaped the net as did almost all key figures. He was later proven to be financing Al Quaeda. Today he sits on the Carlyle Group’s board along with George H.W. Bush. Two minor figures did get jail time for helping BCCI sell $1 billion worth of oscilloscopes and computer equipment to help Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Orin Senator Orin Hatch led the effort to salvage BCCI’s reputation. He had business dealings with two men in Houston connected to BCCI. One of them, Mohammed Hammond, died mysteriously in 1990 .
BCCI bribed politicians in many countries, and among them were members of both parties in the United States. When BCCI collapsed, the Bank of England seized many of its Chicago records, and it is believed that many bribes passed through that city. A list of politicians on the take surfaced in 1991, the same year that the Bank of England took over many of its accounts. The Federal Reserve and Four Media organizations had copies of the list. But little was done with it. Until 1988, when the Chicago branch closed, bribes came to it through the Banca Nazionale del Lavore. Its Atlanta branch also loaned Saddam Huesein $5 billion. A great deal of money was laundered through the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and commodities exchanges through the Board of Trade were used channel money to politicians. A cicero bank with links to the Vatican was also tied into some transactions. Sometimes, the politicians just received speakers fees at the exchanges, which were huge but perfectly legal. In “Operation Sour Mash,” the F.B.I. probed these operations and two members of the Chicago Board of Trade went to prison. Judge Marvin Aspen said the feds had only uncovered the “ tip of the iceberg," but little more was accomplished. It was discovered that a financial services outfit named Capcon was a BCCI front for moving money in the Chicago exchanges. Sherman Skolnick, a Chicago investigator, dug up information that George H.W. Bush was a business partner of Manuel Noriega and that they worked through the Continental Bank of Chicago. The BCCI operatives who were caught in Tampa in 1989 claimed to know about the Bush-Noriega tie and managed to get very light sentences.
Probably as part of an effort to cover its own tracks, the C.I.A. , in 1984, sent a report to many branches of government outlining BCCI’s involvement in moving drug money. Of course, it did not implicate itself. No one in power, other than John Kerry, sought to expose BCCI for 6 more years.
Days before the “surprise” arrest of five top BCCI official , some major international drug dealers withdrew their money. There was never a thorough investigation. The firms’ top lawyers became the sacrificial victims, eventually losing large amounts of stock in a bank BCCI had illegally acquired. Investigators thought top Reagan administrationofficials had warned the drug merchants. In 1991, the federal attorney in Miami was blocked by the Bush administration when he attempted to indict some BCCIofficials for tax faud. The Manhattan DA, who shut down BBI’s American branch, claimed that 16 BCCI rankingofficials died during the investigation.
When the bank’s drug money laundering operation became public knowledge, the George H.W. Bush administration prevented a thorough investigation. . The Manhattan DA, who shut down BBI’s American branch, claimed that 16 BCCI rankingofficials died during the investigation. In 1991, Attorney General William Barr refused to conduct an investigation. He and his predecessor had practically admitted that higher powers in the Bush administration had ruled out a probe. Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger , when working for Kissinger Associates, were BCCI consultants. They later accepted high positions in the George H.W. Bush administration. On July 5, 1991, the Bank of England formally shut down BCCI’s operations.
Eleven billion in assets simply disappeared and little was done for innocent depositors other than honor federal insurance on accounts. Asian workers in the United Kingdom and Gulf States lost a great deal and never knew what hit them. It is said that the terrorist Abu Nidal also lost money. It is hard to believe that BCCI could have operated without the protection and sponsorship of people in high places. Yet, Robert Bueller, then head of the F.B.I.’s criminal division, found that to be the case. Christopher Drogoul, manager of BNL in Atlanta, was blamed for the loss of almost half of that money. His defense was that he was told by the US government to funnel money to Saddam Hussein to finance the war against Iran. A federal judge agreed that he and his co-defendants were "pawns and bit players" in a larger drama, but the Clinton Justice Department pursued his case and he accepted a plea bargain. The Clinton administration did not look further into the BCCI scandal. In 1992, George H. W. Bush pardoned a number of people who had been convicted in connection with BCCI.
The Federal Reserve’s records manager said that a large part of the FED’s records on the BCCI disappeared in 1988 sometime after the Kerry Committee was told that Manuel Noriega’s drug money was laundered through that bank.
In the seventies, drugs came through Columbian outlets, and this trade was controlled by the proprietary known as Zenith Corporation, which was located on the grounds of the University of Miami. By the 1980s, the Panama branch of BCCI was actively seeking drug money deposits on the orders of corporation’s vice president, Alaudin Shaik It was a major handler of the contras’ drug money. BCCI, a bank that catered to the international intelligence community, drug dealers, arms merchants, and others was established at the suggestion of Jackson Stephens, head of the Arkansas Financial Group that bears his name. He contributed $100,000 to George H.W. Bush in 1980 and a like amount to the son in 1990. He played a major role in getting Swiss and Saudi investments for George W. .Bush’s Harken Oil and also helped line up for Harkin an oil deal with Bahrain. BCCI had multiple close ties to Beorge W. Bush’s Harkin Oil. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken —- all since George W. Bush came on board -- raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son."
In the 1980s, an unbelievable amount of C.I.A. money was routed out of HUD to the C.I.A.. How much of this was intentional and how much was simply stolen is difficult to determine. In 1989, Catherine Austin Fitts was assistant secretary of HUD and discovered that vast amounts were missing. Eventually it was learned that $59.6 billion was lost. Under the Clinton Administration, she was given a contract to contiune reforming HUD finances, and she did a remarkable job. Then a rival contractor accused her of stealing $3.8 million. She and her firm were subjected to 18 audits before she was cleared. Today she remains a crusader for honesty in government.
A number of investigators believe BCCI was also used to handle the profits of Saddam Hussein and George H. W. Bush in whatever racket they operated on middle eastern oil in the 1980s. Saddam also had a steak in the Carlyle Group. He was also a major stockholder in Daimler-Chrysler. He was also a major stock holder in Hachette, a foreign firm that was financing George magazine. He also owned part of the firm that produced and operated people moving systems for airports. Perhaps his most valuable assets were records on the financial activities of the Bush family, and just before the second US Iraq War, someone in his family in Switzerland released 300 Bush wire transfer records to some 25 foreign accounts.
Skolnick, using records of Banca Nazionale del Lavoro --, owned in part by the Vatican with a branch in Chicago, claims that Daddy Bush and Saddam were business partners in a number of areas, including the Middle East protection racket. Eventually, the partnership was dissolved in a Chicago case that was sealed by the court. Apparently Saddam defaulted on some loans. The two men seem to have been skimming off the oil profits that resulted from Reagan-Bush policies. Skolnick, thinks they were running an oil protection racket, which seems a little crude. The House Banking Committee, under Henry Gonzales, sought these records but to no avail.
In addition to BNL, Saddam and Bush used BCCI. Some of the sealed records were said to be the relevant Chicago branch records of both banks. Investigators claim that Bush’s share from this oil scheme and his private selling of weapons to Iraq in the 1980s went into Pennzoil, in which he has a major share. It is well-known that Ross Perot financed a massive investigation of the Bush family and some think these activities were at its center. This writer has a different theory that he cannot prove.
People of the State of Illinois ex rel Willis C. Harris, Bank Commissioner vs. the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the House Banking Committee, No. 90 C 6863, in the U.S. District Court, was the case involving the financial relationshiop between Saddam, Bush, and an Italian Bank. It was finally resolved in the 7th Circuit by a panel dominated by Chief Judge Richard Posner, a well-know right wing judge . The case was sealed and Posner issued an order barring Skolnich and his aids from federal court houses. 1990 or 1991) That led to the dissolution of the partnertship is not known. Tom Flocco notes that the F.B.I. raided the Atlanta branch of Banco Lavoro Nazionale on August 4, 1989 and that it found that the bank had loaned Saddam Hussein $4 billion. This seems to have dried up Saddam’s credit and it may have forced him to do something with partnership funds that angered Bush.
French intelligence claimed that Osama bin Laden later rebuilt the BCCI money laundering network so it could be used to launder drug money and finance Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. According to a “confidential ‘France only’” report of the Direction Generale de la Securitie Exterieure, the C.I.A. and MI-6 had control of Al Qaeda’s main training facility in Afghanistan as late as 1995.
The story of BCCI insolvency and scandal broke in July, 1991 when the Justice Department finally opened a half-hearted investigation of the failing institution that had lost at least $ 7 billion in deposits. The bank operated in the United States partly by illegally controlling North American Bank, whose officers claimed to know who owned their bank.
A February 23, 1992 NBC newscast described Bill Casey’s close ties to BCCI. He frequently met with BCCI head Abedi every few months at the Madison Hotel.
In the beginning, 1972, the little bank was a front for British intelligence in Muslim lands, and later its role was vastly expanded. Joseph Trentino has written that BCCI emerged after members of the Safari Club, compised of various intelligence agencies, decided they needed their own bank .
BCCI was operated by reliable C.I.A. associates from Saudi Arabia and Central Asia, many of them Pakistanis, and it became the bank of choice for the agency. It had many layers and overalapping parts and seemed to be structured so its functions could not be monitored or regulated by governments. It relied heavily upon shell corporations and subsidiaries in lands where there were strong bank confidentiality laws. It bribedofficials in at least 71 countries. BCCI grew from a small Pakistani bank to the largest secret money network on earth. George H.W. Bush established an account there while still DCI and French police later found it when they raided BCCI. The bank was used by the mafia, all sorts of dictators, war lords, terrorists, skamsters, and criminals around the world. On June 4, 1992, The Houston Chronicle reported that Khalid bin Mahfouz , Osama bin Laden’s brother-n-law owned a large chunk of BCCI stock. He has numerous dealings with George W. Bush’s friend, James Bath. Thomas Kean, chairman of the 9/11 Commission was also a bin Mahfouz business partner. Prince Turki bin Faisal al-Saud, former head of Saudi intelligence, was another important investor. Jack Blum , a former Senate investigator, said, “This whole collection of people were wrapped up in the Bush crowd in Texas.”
It was involved in the arms and drugs trades, blackmailing politicians, and financing terrorism. It was closely tied the Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI, and played a central role in the drug trade. It was also the main conduit for financing the resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The Chinese Communists assisted the C.I.A., through BCCI, in helping the mujahedeen against the Soviets. BCCI also sent money to officers of international banks and banking regulatory agencies to further financial schemes; all of those, some say, prefigured the financial crisis of 2008.
In 1977 it began to infiltrate the U.S. banking system through the covert acquisition of banks. Agha Hasan Abedi, BCCI founder, arranged for some of his clients to purchase First American Bankshares, which had probably been a C.I.A. bank for decides. There were three other BCCI banks in the U.S. Jackson Stephens, then chair of Worthen Bank in Arkansas, played an important role bringing the bank to the US when he helped BCCI purchase First American. Doubtless, a good deal of drug money was laundered there. Eventually the ruling house of Abu Dhabi would own a substantial chunk of the bank.
A case can be made that Charles Keating had ties to the C.I.A., and a much stronger case can be made that the agency looted some S and Ls in the late 1980s and routed the proceeds through BCCI.
Some might remember that in 1990, Baltimore financier Robert Maxwell brought suite to obtain Bank of Maryland records. He claimed that his relationship with the bank was ended because he objected to the C.I.A.’s using the bank to issue illegal letters of credit to cover a covert operation. Two years later, the court ordered those records sealed. The case is interesting becaue it raises the question of whether the C.I.A. is essentially exempt from banking regulations.
BCCI operated through many layers of subsidiary entities and became the central bank for some countries and repaying leaders of those countries with bribes Pakistanis and Saudi seemed to be running it, but it is unknown who owned and controlled it. In some ways it was a giant Ponzi scheme, and its financial statements were less than transparent and honest. By the early eighties it owned banks in the US and around the world. Mohammed Hammond, who ran the Luxembourg branch also moved money for Hezballah. Manuel Noriega was instructed to route his money laundering through it, and it soon became his favorite bank’ s favorite bank. It operated at so many levels and through so many fronts that it was almost impossible to follow how it moved money. When Noriega was arrested, the US government was only able to trace the movement of $20 million of his money through BCCI’s labyrinths. BCCI was used to pay people on the C.I.A. payroll in Britain and it was used fund the insurgency against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.
BCCI was used by the C.I.A., Mossad, and many intelligence agencies as well as organized crime. It was a key conduit for funding the right wing militias in Central America. The full extent of C.I.A. involvement in the farious frauds perpetrated by the BCCI will never be known. At the least, it must have had knowledge of of these schemes and who was being bribed . Such information would have been invaluable.
A Senate committee eventually described it as “the largest criminal enterprise in history.” When reports of its wrong-doing surfaced, George W. Bush had Robert Mueller of the Justice Department investigate. Witnesses and files disappeared and lower level prosecutors complained of high level pressure to “lay off” Khalid bin Mahfouz, Osama bin Laden’s brother -in-law and likely bag man escaped the net as did almost all key figures. He was later proven to be financing Al Quaeda. Today he sits on the Carlyle Group’s board along with George H.W. Bush. Two minor figures did get jail time for helping BCCI sell $1 billion worth of oscilloscopes and computer equipment to help Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Orin Senator Orin Hatch led the effort to salvage BCCI’s reputation. He had business dealings with two men in Houston connected to BCCI. One of them, Mohammed Hammond, died mysteriously in 1990 .
BCCI bribed politicians in many countries, and among them were members of both parties in the United States. When BCCI collapsed, the Bank of England seized many of its Chicago records, and it is believed that many bribes passed through that city. A list of politicians on the take surfaced in 1991, the same year that the Bank of England took over many of its accounts. The Federal Reserve and Four Media organizations had copies of the list. But little was done with it. Until 1988, when the Chicago branch closed, bribes came to it through the Banca Nazionale del Lavore. Its Atlanta branch also loaned Saddam Huesein $5 billion. A great deal of money was laundered through the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and commodities exchanges through the Board of Trade were used channel money to politicians. A cicero bank with links to the Vatican was also tied into some transactions. Sometimes, the politicians just received speakers fees at the exchanges, which were huge but perfectly legal. In “Operation Sour Mash,” the F.B.I. probed these operations and two members of the Chicago Board of Trade went to prison. Judge Marvin Aspen said the feds had only uncovered the “ tip of the iceberg," but little more was accomplished. It was discovered that a financial services outfit named Capcon was a BCCI front for moving money in the Chicago exchanges. Sherman Skolnick, a Chicago investigator, dug up information that George H.W. Bush was a business partner of Manuel Noriega and that they worked through the Continental Bank of Chicago. The BCCI operatives who were caught in Tampa in 1989 claimed to know about the Bush-Noriega tie and managed to get very light sentences.
Probably as part of an effort to cover its own tracks, the C.I.A. , in 1984, sent a report to many branches of government outlining BCCI’s involvement in moving drug money. Of course, it did not implicate itself. No one in power, other than John Kerry, sought to expose BCCI for 6 more years.
Days before the “surprise” arrest of five top BCCI official , some major international drug dealers withdrew their money. There was never a thorough investigation. The firms’ top lawyers became the sacrificial victims, eventually losing large amounts of stock in a bank BCCI had illegally acquired. Investigators thought top Reagan administrationofficials had warned the drug merchants. In 1991, the federal attorney in Miami was blocked by the Bush administration when he attempted to indict some BCCIofficials for tax faud. The Manhattan DA, who shut down BBI’s American branch, claimed that 16 BCCI rankingofficials died during the investigation.
When the bank’s drug money laundering operation became public knowledge, the George H.W. Bush administration prevented a thorough investigation. . The Manhattan DA, who shut down BBI’s American branch, claimed that 16 BCCI rankingofficials died during the investigation. In 1991, Attorney General William Barr refused to conduct an investigation. He and his predecessor had practically admitted that higher powers in the Bush administration had ruled out a probe. Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger , when working for Kissinger Associates, were BCCI consultants. They later accepted high positions in the George H.W. Bush administration. On July 5, 1991, the Bank of England formally shut down BCCI’s operations.
Eleven billion in assets simply disappeared and little was done for innocent depositors other than honor federal insurance on accounts. Asian workers in the United Kingdom and Gulf States lost a great deal and never knew what hit them. It is said that the terrorist Abu Nidal also lost money. It is hard to believe that BCCI could have operated without the protection and sponsorship of people in high places. Yet, Robert Bueller, then head of the F.B.I.’s criminal division, found that to be the case. Christopher Drogoul, manager of BNL in Atlanta, was blamed for the loss of almost half of that money. His defense was that he was told by the US government to funnel money to Saddam Hussein to finance the war against Iran. A federal judge agreed that he and his co-defendants were "pawns and bit players" in a larger drama, but the Clinton Justice Department pursued his case and he accepted a plea bargain. The Clinton administration did not look further into the BCCI scandal. In 1992, George H. W. Bush pardoned a number of people who had been convicted in connection with BCCI.
The Federal Reserve’s records manager said that a large part of the FED’s records on the BCCI disappeared in 1988 sometime after the Kerry Committee was told that Manuel Noriega’s drug money was laundered through that bank.
In the seventies, drugs came through Columbian outlets, and this trade was controlled by the proprietary known as Zenith Corporation, which was located on the grounds of the University of Miami. By the 1980s, the Panama branch of BCCI was actively seeking drug money deposits on the orders of corporation’s vice president, Alaudin Shaik It was a major handler of the contras’ drug money. BCCI, a bank that catered to the international intelligence community, drug dealers, arms merchants, and others was established at the suggestion of Jackson Stephens, head of the Arkansas Financial Group that bears his name. He contributed $100,000 to George H.W. Bush in 1980 and a like amount to the son in 1990. He played a major role in getting Swiss and Saudi investments for George W. .Bush’s Harken Oil and also helped line up for Harkin an oil deal with Bahrain. BCCI had multiple close ties to Beorge W. Bush’s Harkin Oil. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken —- all since George W. Bush came on board -- raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son."
In the 1980s, an unbelievable amount of C.I.A. money was routed out of HUD to the C.I.A.. How much of this was intentional and how much was simply stolen is difficult to determine. In 1989, Catherine Austin Fitts was assistant secretary of HUD and discovered that vast amounts were missing. Eventually it was learned that $59.6 billion was lost. Under the Clinton Administration, she was given a contract to contiune reforming HUD finances, and she did a remarkable job. Then a rival contractor accused her of stealing $3.8 million. She and her firm were subjected to 18 audits before she was cleared. Today she remains a crusader for honesty in government.
A number of investigators believe BCCI was also used to handle the profits of Saddam Hussein and George H. W. Bush in whatever racket they operated on middle eastern oil in the 1980s. Saddam also had a steak in the Carlyle Group. He was also a major stockholder in Daimler-Chrysler. He was also a major stock holder in Hachette, a foreign firm that was financing George magazine. He also owned part of the firm that produced and operated people moving systems for airports. Perhaps his most valuable assets were records on the financial activities of the Bush family, and just before the second US Iraq War, someone in his family in Switzerland released 300 Bush wire transfer records to some 25 foreign accounts.
Skolnick, using records of Banca Nazionale del Lavoro --, owned in part by the Vatican with a branch in Chicago, claims that Daddy Bush and Saddam were business partners in a number of areas, including the Middle East protection racket. Eventually, the partnership was dissolved in a Chicago case that was sealed by the court. Apparently Saddam defaulted on some loans. The two men seem to have been skimming off the oil profits that resulted from Reagan-Bush policies. Skolnick, thinks they were running an oil protection racket, which seems a little crude. The House Banking Committee, under Henry Gonzales, sought these records but to no avail.
In addition to BNL, Saddam and Bush used BCCI. Some of the sealed records were said to be the relevant Chicago branch records of both banks. Investigators claim that Bush’s share from this oil scheme and his private selling of weapons to Iraq in the 1980s went into Pennzoil, in which he has a major share. It is well-known that Ross Perot financed a massive investigation of the Bush family and some think these activities were at its center. This writer has a different theory that he cannot prove.
People of the State of Illinois ex rel Willis C. Harris, Bank Commissioner vs. the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the House Banking Committee, No. 90 C 6863, in the U.S. District Court, was the case involving the financial relationshiop between Saddam, Bush, and an Italian Bank. It was finally resolved in the 7th Circuit by a panel dominated by Chief Judge Richard Posner, a well-know right wing judge . The case was sealed and Posner issued an order barring Skolnich and his aids from federal court houses. 1990 or 1991) That led to the dissolution of the partnertship is not known. Tom Flocco notes that the F.B.I. raided the Atlanta branch of Banco Lavoro Nazionale on August 4, 1989 and that it found that the bank had loaned Saddam Hussein $4 billion. This seems to have dried up Saddam’s credit and it may have forced him to do something with partnership funds that angered Bush.
French intelligence claimed that Osama bin Laden later rebuilt the BCCI money laundering network so it could be used to launder drug money and finance Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. According to a “confidential ‘France only’” report of the Direction Generale de la Securitie Exterieure, the C.I.A. and MI-6 had control of Al Qaeda’s main training facility in Afghanistan as late as 1995.
The story of BCCI insolvency and scandal broke in July, 1991 when the Justice Department finally opened a half-hearted investigation of the failing institution that had lost at least $ 7 billion in deposits. The bank operated in the United States partly by illegally controlling North American Bank, whose officers claimed to know who owned their bank.
A February 23, 1992 NBC newscast described Bill Casey’s close ties to BCCI. He frequently met with BCCI head Abedi every few months at the Madison Hotel.
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