Bank of Credit and Commerce International

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The Bank of Credit and Commerce International was at one time the 7th largest bank in the world. It came under investigation in numerous countries worldwide in the mid 1980s for money laundering for narcotics and weapons sellers. Time magazine wrote, "Superlatives are quickly exhausted: it is the largest corporate criminal enterprise ever" and ran a cover story labeling it the World's Sleaziest Bank.[1]

American branch

Former adviser to four Democratic presidents, Clark Clifford, headed up the American branch.

The bank was called First American Bankshares and became the largest in Washington DC. Robert Morgenthau, the district attorney in New York City, disclosed that his office had found evidence that the parent company of Clifford's bank was secretly controlled by BCCI. The district attorney convened a grand jury to determine whether Clifford and his partner, Robert A. Altman, had deliberately misled federal regulators when the two men assured them that BCCI would have no control.[2]

Stephens Inc and the Riadys'

Jackson Stephens, a billionaire banker in Little Rock, Arkansas, and one of presidential candidate Bill Clinton's main supporters, played a key role in setting up the illegal purchase of the American branch of the BCCI of two American banks.

In 1977 an investor group that included Jackson Stephens took over First American Bank in Washington, D.C. This bank was headquartered near the White House, and had many government employees as account holders—the perfect vehicle for gathering political intelligence. To take advantage of this fact, Jackson Stephens proposed that his software firm Systematics handle all the accounting for the bank. But the investor group refused to go along.

So Stephens, with the help of Bert Lance and others, brought in BCCI to wrest control of the bank from that group, and to put it into the hands of friendlier partners. By 1978 there were lawsuits, and Stephens' software firm Systematics was represented by Joseph Giroir, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Vince Foster of the Rose Law Firm in 1978.

The software firm Systematics was to become the nation's biggest supplier of back-office banking software, and would eventually work closely with the National Security Agency to facilitate intelligence monitoring of banking transactions. Vince Foster would be assigned by Stephens to an oversight role on this project.

Jackson Stephens, meanwhile, proposed, developed, and financed a plant for hazardous waste facilities, called Waste Technology Inc, beginning in 1979. This project became a bottomless pit as a money loser, so at one point, the financially-strapped Stephens made a deal with Indonesian Mochtar Riady of the Lippo Group to set up a money-laundering operation in Arkansas. Stephens and Riady had previously formed Stephens Finance Ltd. in Hong Kong in 1976.

Stephens bought 9.3 percent of Worthen bank while Lippo purchased 9.4 percent. Lippo paid about $16 million for its share, and installed James Riady as a bank director in 1984. Stephens-Lippo continued to increase their share of Worthen stock, up to 36.7 percent.

This union came about just as the Mena, Arkansas, drug-and-arms trade was creating a vast local demand for money-laundering services. At the Asian end, with Mochtar Riady, Stephens purchased Seng Heng Bank in Macao, the "Oriental Las Vegas", where gambling is the primary source of government revenue. Stephens' Systematics supplied software to the Banco Nacional Ultramarino, the cashier and treasury bank of the Macao government and the bank that issues the local currency. Macao is located less than 40 miles from Hong Kong, the center for heroin trade.

Stephens' principal motive in bringing BCCI to America was apparently to connect up his own financial institutions to a global system of money laundering—not only First American Bank, but those in Little Rock also. To avoid the type of SEC scrutiny involved in the Financial General takeover, Webster Hubbell was employed to draw up the charter for the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA). The structure for the laundry was then in place.

Bert Lance and Clark Clifford

Both First American National Bank and Georgia National Bank, owned by Bert Lance, were purchased by BCCI front man and Stephens business associate Gaith Pharon. Stephens' family bank, the Worthern National Bank (later renamed Boatman's National Bank of Arkansas),[3] extended a two million dollar loan to the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign.

Stephens was named in the court records as having brought Pharon together with Stephens' close friend Bert Lance. Lance was a former OMB nominee under President Jimmy Carter who was denied confirmation due to a banking scandal.

BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi was introduced to Bert Lance by Stephens. Lance asked Clifford to perform due diligence on BCCI.[4] Stephens, Lance, and First American Bank director and longtime Democratic party power broker Clark Clifford all maintained that they did not know the group of Pakinstani and Saudi investors headed by Pharon, which they were dealing with, were actually fronting for BCCI.[5]

Clifford, who was 82 at the time and a figurehead who lent his name to give it an air of legitimacy, predicament worsened when it was disclosed he had made about $6 million in profits from bank stock that he bought with an unsecured loan from BCCI. A New York grand jury handed up indictments, as did the Justice Department. Clifford's assets in New York, where he kept most of his investments, were frozen.

The "Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations United States Senate" led by Senators John Kerry and Hank Brown noted that a key strategy of "BCCI's successful secret acquisitions of U.S. banks in the face of regulatory suspicion was its aggressive use of a series of prominent Americans," Clifford among them.[6] Clifford, who prided himself on decades of meticulously ethical civic conduct, summed his predicament up when he told a reporter from the New York Times, "I have a choice of either seeming stupid or venal." Indictments against Clifford had been set aside because of his failing health.

Systematics, Hillary Clinton and Vince Foster

Jackson Stephens was the American front man for BCCI. When Stephens group tried to take over Washington Bank Holding Co., the SEC blocked them at the time, partly because they were insisting that Systematics be brought in to do data processing for this multistate bank holding company in Washington DC. Hillary Clinton represented Systematics in that action.[7] Systematics for many years had been laundering covert funds for the CIA and the intelligence community - legally at the time, as well.

Hillary Clinton was the intellectual property lawyer for Systematics, and obtained access to important materials from Systematics clients, such as the operating system for a new national security computer at E-Systems of Dallas, Texas.

Vince Foster was an attorney with a professional reputation for integrity, and in the early 1980s began cooperating with Israeli intelligence. But Foster began playing a dangerous game the mid 1980s when he became the link between Systematics and the NSA,[8] the main US government agency that was looking for fronts to market the stolen Inslaw software. Foster had a Swiss bank account and was making one-day trips to Switzerland every six to eight months.[9] Foster was the bagman for the Arkansas political machine. When he was serving in the White House, on July 1 1993, Foster purchased a round-trip ticket to Switzerland. This prompted surveillance by CIA counterintelligence, NSA, FBI, and a four-person IRS team, putting a tremendous amount of psychological pressure on him. Foster became alarmed that he was under investigation after he discovered the Swiss bank account had been drained of the $2.73 million deposited there. The account had been drained by ex-CIA hackers who placed the funds in an escrow account for the CIA.[10][11] Foster hired James Hamilton, a high-powered Washington lawyer specializing in white-collar crime who handles cases before Congressional committees. George Stephanopoulos is also said to be at this meeting. The money was paid evidently as hush money and for legal fees. The hope apparently that Foster would not break under stress and name names of others in the Clinton administration.[12]

A weekend meeting was held with Webster Hubbell and both their wives at the estate of Michael Cardoza who later headed the Clinton Legal Defense fund. $286,000 was deposited into the account of Vince's wife, Lisa Foster, shortly before the meeting.

Systematics also came to be represented by Beryl Anthony, a partner at the Washington law office of Winston and Strawn, former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and husband of Vince Foster's sister Sheila Foster Anthony. It was Sheila Anthony who, while Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs at the Justice Department, effected a $286,000 transfer to Lisa Foster from a Democratic National Committee account held at Mellon Bank, just four days before Vince Foster met his death. Upon Foster's death, Hillary Clinton directed the removal of files from Foster's office.

Inslaw Inc and the PROMIS software

Part of the "intellectual property" Hillary Clinton handles involved a banking transaction software system based on the stolen PROMIS software. A telecommunications back door to the PROMIS software was introduced by Michael Riconosciuto, Director of Research for a Wackenhut-Cabazon Indian Reservation joint venture. In an affidavit, Riconosciuto says the copy of the PROMIS software he received was given to Wackenhut by US Justice Dept. official Peter Videnieks. Earl Brian, acting through Wackenhut, then gave it to Riconosciuto.

Disposition

The American banking assets including First American Bank were sold to First Union Bank. On September 1, 2001, First Union merged with Wachovia, and later Wachovia merged with Wells Fargo.[13] Wells Fargo had its own banking scandal in 2016.

Pakistani nuclear bomb

BCCI founder Abedi was committed to the development of an Islamic atomic bomb, even donating 500 million rupees for the creation of Pakistan's Gulam Ishaq Research Institute for nuclear development.

BCCI paid the lawyer for Dr. Abdul Qader Khan, head of Pakistan's nuclear program, who a Dutch court convicted in 1983 of stealing the blueprints for a uranium enrichment factory. Three Pakistanis indicted in Houston in 1984 had tried to buy nuclear triggers using BCCI gold. A Pakistani-born Canadian, indicted in Philadelphia in 1987 for conspiracy to export restricted specialty steel and metal to enhance nuclear explosions, paid for the materials through BCCI Toronto.

See also

References

  1. ↑ http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19910729,00.html
  2. ↑ Summary of Charges, US Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, No. 91-043, July 29, 1992, pp. 1-11.
  3. ↑ http://www.ffiec.gov/nicpubweb/nicweb/InstitutionHistory.aspx?parID_RSSD=883249&parDT_END=99991231
  4. ↑ BCCI IN THE UNITED STATES, 1992."According to [Bert] Lance, he then turned to Clark Clifford, who had represented him in Congressional hearings into Lance's activities in Georgia, and asked Clifford to do due diligence on BCCI. When Clifford called Lance back to tell Lance that Abedi was "a man of integrity and character," Lance agreed to meet with Abedi and Naqvi in London, and there became BCCI's agent for its forays into the U.S.(15) Thus, by Lance's account, Clifford first had contact with BCCI on behalf of Lance in October, 1977."
  5. ↑ http://fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/06early.htm
  6. ↑ The BCCI Affair, A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, 102d Congress 2d Session Senate, December 1992.
  7. ↑ Hillary Clinton and Web Hubbell represented Systematics during the BCCI takeover of First American, by Orlin Grabbe
  8. ↑ Allegations Regarding Vince Foster, the NSA, and Banking Transactions Spying, by Orlin Grabbe
  9. ↑ An FBI interview report by agent Russell Bransford and a handwritten note from the Office of Independent Counsel found at the National Archives refer to Vincent Foster's Swiss bank account. FBI Agent Bransford interview report April 21, 1994 and Independent Counsel notes November 13, 1995
  10. ↑ Jim Quinn interview with James Norman, WRRK Radio Pittsburgh, December 7, 1995.
    Editor's note: James Norman of Media Bypass Magazine published Fosergate, an article detailing the background and circumstances of Vince Foster's death. Norman, formally a Senior Editor of Forbes magazine, was terminated due to Fostergate's controversial and national security concerns regarding Foster being investigated for espionage, and Foster's link to a foreign intelligence organization. Fostergate originally had been written for Forbes magazine.
  11. ↑ Fostergate, Media ByPass, October, 1995
  12. ↑ Jim Quinn interview with James Norman, December 7, 1995
  13. ↑ First Union is Now Wells Fargo. Retrieved on October 23, 2016.
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