FTR#589—Interview with Lucy
Komisar about the BCCI--(Two 30-minute segments) (Sources are noted in parentheses.) (Recorded
on 3/11/2007.)
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NEW!! A number of
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Martin Bormann: Nazi in
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Stewart Martin. Taken together, these books will provide a significant
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be downloaded with a modem Internet connection. They are available at: Spitfirelist.com/Books. In addition, we have added Cairo to Damascus by John Roy Carlson [1951], Germany Plots with the Kremlin by T.H. Tetens [1953], and Armies of Spies by Joseph Golomb [1939].
Yet another recent addition is Germany’s
Master Plan by Joseph Borkin and Charles Welsh. (Borkin is the author of
the 1979 classic The Crime and Punishment
of I.G. Farben.) Another anti-fascist classic about I.G. Farben supplements
the Borkin and Welsh text—Treason’s Peace
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both published in 1943. The Winkler text documents the evolution of militant
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Summary of FTR#589—(Note: The massive
volume of ‘For The Record’ programs about 9/11 and related topics is summarized
and analyzed in the periodically-updated description for FTR#391. FTR#’s
454, 455, 456 are compilations of much of the key documentation
culled from Mr. Emory’s investigation into 9/11. Along with FTR#391, they should give
listeners/readers a substantive grasp of this momentous event. It is
recommended that listeners use this description and e-mail it to others.) Highlighting information
about the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (“BCCI”), this interview
sets forth investigative journalist Lucy Komisar’s chapter on the bank in a new
book “A Game as Old as Empire.” A major vehicle for covert operations in the
1970’s, and 1980’s, the institution was known to insiders as “The Bank of
Crooks and Criminals International.” With strong connections to both the elder
and younger George Bush, the Saudi elite, Saddam Hussein, the Iranian mullahs,
the Iran-Contra scandal, drug trafficking, terrorism and the milieu of Osama
bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the bank’s closets held many skeletons. This broadcast
details some of those skeletons, and reviews key aspects of the cover-up. Be sure to visit Lucy’s
website, where the book can be ordered at a discount. In addition to the
programs noted below, be sure to listen to check out Dave’s other interviews
with Lucy, such as FTR#’s 463,
485, 531.
Program Highlights Include: The BCCI’s links through Saudi intelligence
to the elder George Bush; the BCCI’s links through its investors to the
capitalization of the younger George Bush’s energy ventures; the cover-up of
the BCCI investigation by the administration of Bush the Elder; the
disappearance of the money that was stolen; the role of the BCCI in the arming
of Iran as part of the Iran-Contra scandal; the BCCI’s role in the arming of
Saddam Hussein; the role of the BCCI in arming the Afghan mujahedeen; the role
of the BCCI and its investors in financing the activities of Osama bin Laden,
both during the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan and subsequently; the
role of the Clearstream network in the BCCI affair; the role of FBI director
Robert Mueller in covering up the BCCI case.
1.
Financed by wealthy investors from Pakistan and the Persian Gulf
(mostly Saudi Arabia), the BCCI served as a major vehicle for U.S. covert
operations around the world, the Middle East in particular. Eventually, the
institution’s role in financing illicit weapons deals, drug trafficking
operations and international terrorism led to an investigation. New York D.A.
Robert Morgenthau returned indictments. The administration of George W. Bush
was less than vigorous in its pursuit of the case, perhaps due to the fact that
the BCCI and its major players were very, very close to both the elder and the
younger George Bush. The monies that vanished have never been located. The Bank of Credit and Commerce International was founded in
1972 by a Pakistani banker, Agha Hasan Abedi, with the support of Sheik Zayed
bin Sultan al Nahyan, the ruler of the oil-rich state of Abu Dhabi and head of
the United Arab Emirates. The Arabs’ interest in the bank was more than financial. A
classified CIA memo on BCCI in the mid-80s said that ‘its principal
shareholders are among the power elite of the Middle East, including the rulers
of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates, and several influential Saudi Arabians.
They are less interested in profitability than in promoting the Muslim cause.’
BCCI enriched the entourage of the Bushes and other Washington influentials.
Its biggest shareholders were Saudi and United Arab Emirates sheiks. The money
it stole—somewhere between $9.5 billion and $15 billion—made its 20-year heist
the biggest bank fraud in history. Most of it was never recovered. The George
H.W. Bush administration, in power when the mega-fraud was discovered, went
after the bank half-heartedly and only after indictments by New York District
Attorney Robert Morgenthau. It never touched the Persian Gulf money-men who ran
the BCCI criminal enterprise. The Bush family and its allies used and then
protected the world’s most criminal bank.” (A Game as Old as
Empire; edited by Stephen Hiatt with an introduction by Jonathan Perkins;
Berrett-Kohler; Copyright 2007, Berrett-Koehler; Excerpts
are from Chapter Four by Lucy Komisar; view more text excerpts at: http://ftrsupplemental.blogspot.com/2007/03/bush-al-qaeda-and-saddam.html.)
2.
Bush family ally bin Mahfouz never went to jail as a result of his
wrongdoing in the BCCI affair. “As a result of
Morgenthau’s investigation, in July 1992 a New York grand jury indicted [Saudi
businessman and head of the National Commercial Bank] Khalid bin Mahfouz and an
aide for defrauding BCCI and its depositors of as much as $300 million, using depositors’
money to buy his bank shares. The U.S. Federal Reserve alleged that he breached
banking regulations. But bin Mahfouz alleged that he could not be touched by
American criminal law in Saudi Arabia, and Morgenthau dropped the charges in
1993 after bin Mahfouz agreed to settle for $225 million. He and the National
Commercial Bank also made a $253 million deal with BCCI’s creditors to resolve
their claims. Kamal Adham, the former Saudi intelligence chief, agreed to pay a
$105 million fine. The fines in the end toped $1.5 billion, a fraction of the
amount that had disappeared, and nobody went to jail. The Justice Department
didn’t go after Bush family friend and money source bin Mahfouz at all.” (Idem.)
3.
The elder George Bush’s tenure as directors of the CIA brought him into
contact with many of the key players in the BCCI. Many BCCI players, including
Osama bin Laden’s brother, helped the younger Bush to get his energy ventures
off the ground. “Sheik Kamal Adham, brother-in-law
of the late Saudi King Faisal, head of Saudi intelligence from 1963 to 1979,
and the CIA’s liaison in the area, became one of BCCI’s largest shareholders.
George Bush Sr. knew Adham from his time running the CIA in 1975. Another
investor was Prince Turki bin Faisal al-Saud, who succeeded Adham as Saudi
intelligence chief. The Bushes’ links to the bank passed through Texas
businessman James R. Bath to bin Mahfouz. Bath invested money in the United
States on behalf of bin Mahfouz and with a third partner, Ghaith Pharaon (a
Saudi Harvard MBA), shared ownership of Houston’s Main Bank. In 1976, when Bush
was the head of the CIA, the agency sold some of the planes of Air America, a
secret ‘proprietary’ it used during the Vietnam War, to Skyway, a company owned
by Bath and bin Mahfouz. Bath then helped finance George W. Bush’s oil company,
Arbusto Energy Inc., in 1979 and 1980.” (Idem.)
4.
George W. Bush’s energy ventures continued to prosper as a result of
the backing of BCCI investors. “When Harken
Energy Corp., which had absorbed Arbusto (by then merged with Spectrum 7
Energy), got into financial trouble in 1987, Stephens helped it secure $25
million financing from the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS). As part of that
deal, a place on the board, was given to Harken shareholder Sheik Abdullah Taha
Bakhsh, whose chief banker was BCCI shareholder bin Mahfouz. Then, in 1988,
George Bush Sr. was elected president. Harken benefited by getting some new
investors, including Salem bin Laden, Osama bin Laden’s brother, and Khalid bin
Mahfouz. Osama bin Laden himself was busy elsewhere at the time—organizing
al-Qaeda.” (Idem.)
5.
During the first Afghan War (against the former Soviet Union), the BCCI
was used to fund the Afghan Mujaheddin. In order to do so, the bank worked with
the Bank al-Taqwa, which was used to finance al-Qaeda’s activities. (For more
about Bank al-Taqwa, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 343, 454, 455, 456, 462, 464, 467, 513, 537.) “The CIA used Islamabad and other BCCI branches in Pakistan
to funnel some of the $2 billion that Washington sent to Osama bin Laden’s
Mujaheddin to help fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. It moved the cash the
Pakistani military and government officials skimmed from U.S. aid to the
Mujaheddin. It also moved money as required by the Saudi intelligence services.
The CIA money passed from the U.S. to the al-Taqwa Bank in Nassau to Barbados
to Karachi to BCCI in Islamabad. Al-Taqwa—the name means ‘fear of God’—was not
a real bank with bricks and mortar and depositors and services. It was a shell
bank set up to finance the jihad. The BCCI operation gave Osama bin Laden an
education in offshore black finance that he would put to use when he organized
the jihad against America. And the CIA was well aware of its student’s
capabilities. After 9/11, U.S. agents headed straight for al-Taqwa’s operations
in Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Nassau and shut them down. Swiss police
questioned al-Taqwa’s president, Youssef Mustafa Nada, who was part of the
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamist organization, and they searched
his home in Campione d’Italia, an Italian tax haven on Lake Lugano.” (Idem.)
6.
During the Iran-Iraq War, the BCCI helped to finance the Reagan/Bush
administrations’ arming of Saddam Hussein. “BCCI
also helped Saddam Hussein, again with the complicity of his Washington friends.
The bank funneled millions of dollars to the Atlanta branch of the Italian
government–owned Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, which was Baghdad’s American
banker, so that from 1985 to 1989 it could make $4 billion in secret loans to
Iraq to help it buy arms. Congressman Henry Gonzalez held a hearing on BNL in
1992 during which he quoted from a confidential CIA document that said the
agency had long been aware that the bank's headquarters was involved in the
American branch's Iraqi loans. Kickbacks from 15 percent commissions on
BNL-sponsored loans were channeled into bank accounts held for Iraqi leaders
via BCCI offices in the Caymans as well as in offshore Luxembourg and
Switzerland. BNL was a client of Kissinger Associates, and Henry Kissinger was
on the bank’s international advisory board, along with Brent Scowcroft, who
would become George Bush Sr.’s national security advisor. That connection makes
Bush administration officials’ indignation at the Iraq’s ‘oil for food’ payoffs
rather disingenuous. Bush and his friends of course knew that Saddam was making
payoffs on their watch: their favorite criminal bank was moving the money! And
in another pre-9/11 incident of blowback, the weapons bought by Saddam with BNL
funds were used during the Gulf War against Americans and their allies.” (Idem.)
7.
In addition to arming Saddam Hussein, the BCCI was also involved in
arming Iraq’s erstwhile enemy Iran, through the machinations of the Iran-Contra
scandal. Lucy reviews Oliver North’s use of the bank for many of the Iran/Contra
deals. “Not content with aiding Saddam Hussein,
the Reaganites decided to arm Iran as well. A Pakistani arms dealer, Arif
Durrani, said that during the Reagan and Bush administrations the CIA used BCCI
to finance shipments of Hawk missiles to Iran to promote stalemate in the
Iran-Iraq War. BCCI’s largest borrower was the Gulf Group, the family company
of Mustapha Gokal, financial advisor to radical Islamist Ayatollah Khomeini.
BCCI gave the Gulf Group unsecured loans of $800 million—more than two-thirds
its total capital—and the Gokal company provided Iran with war material, food
and drugs.” (Idem.)
8.
Depositors have never been reimbursed. The major investors, such as bin
Mahfouz, are doing quite well, however. “What
happened to the billions of dollars sucked out of BCCI and never repaid to
depositors? International banks’ complicity in the offshore secrecy system has
effectively covered up the money trail. But in the years after the collapse of
BCCI, Khalid bin Mahfouz was still flush with cash, and the former financier of
George W. Bush became a financier of Osama bin Laden. In 1992, bin Mahfouz had
established the Muwafaq (“blessed relief”) foundation in the offshore Channel
Islands, providing it with as much as $30 million. The U.S. Treasury Department
called it ‘an Al-Qaeda front that receives funding from wealthy Saudi
businessmen.’” (Idem.)
9.
More about the proximity of bin Mahfouz’s National Commercial Bank to
the milieu of the bin Laden family: “His $21
billion National Commercial Bank was the world’s largest private bank. NCB was
affiliated with Inter-Maritime Management SA, a subsidiary of the Bank of New
York-Inter Maritime Bank in Geneva. By coincidence [!], another Inter-Maritime
subsidiary, Unimags Trading, had shared a Geneva address with SICO, the Saudi
Investment Company run by Yeslam Binladen. SICO is the holding company of the
Saudi Binladen Group (SBG), the largest Middle East construction company, which
operates through a web of offshore companies and is owned by the extended bin
Laden family. Yeslam is the half-brother of Osama bin Laden.” (Idem.)
10.
BCCI player bin Mahfouz’s National Commercial Bank was deeply involved
with the DMI, which in turn, is profoundly connected to the milieu of Osama bin
Laden and others of his family. “In 1998, the U.S.
complained to Saudi Arabia that the National Commercial Bank was funding Osama
bin Laden’s activities in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and the Abu Sayyaf
guerillas in the Philippines. Bin Mahfouz was a board member of the Dar al-Mal
al-Islami (DMI), the House of Finance of Islam, a Geneva-based bank charged
with distributing subsidies of the royal family in the Muslim world. DMI,
founded in 1981 and with assets of an estimated $3.5 billion, also had
connections to the bin Laden family: its 12-member board of directors included
Haydar Mohamed bin Laden, Osama bin Laden’s half-brother. The connections are
interesting. The bank’s president, Mohammed al-Faisal, was also an investor and
board member of al-Shamal Bank, which held al-Qaeda members’ accounts. In testimony
during U.S. trials of suspects in the 1998 attacks on American embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania, an al-Qaeda collaborator Essam al-Ridi, recounted how bin
Laden transferred $230,000 from al-Shamal Bank to a bank in Arizona to buy a
plane to fly Stinger missiles from Pakistan to Sudan. Coming full circle,
al-Faisal’s DMI was a major shareholder of al-Taqwa. In 1999, U.S.
investigators looking into the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Africa, found
suspicious transfers of tens of millions of dollars from NCB to ‘charities’
believed to funnel money to Osama bin Laden. Some of the ‘charities’ believed
to funnel money to Osama bin Laden. Some of the ‘charities’ believed to funnel
money to Osama bin Laden. Some of the ‘charities’ were run by the bin Mahfouz
family the Saudis ordered an audit and confirmed the transfers. Altogether, $2
billion was missing from the National Commercial Bank. The Saudis put bin
Mahfouz under house arrest and forced to sell his shares. . . .But the money he
ran still flowed to bin Laden.” (Idem.)
11.
Next, Lucy and Dave review the links between the
Clearstream network and BCCI. (For more about this, see—among other
programs—FTR#’s 356, 387, 458.)
12.
The tepid, reluctant investigation into BCCI that was
described in paragraph #1 was overseen by Robert Mueller, now head of the FBI.
When Mueller was appointed, Mr. Emory noted that his investigation of BCCI was
less than vigorous and noted as well that many of the players in the BCCI
scandal also figured in the investigation into al-Qaeda. In FTR#310, Mr. Emory speculated
that the proximity of the elder and younger George Bush, as well as Osama bin
Laden to the milieu of the BCCI might well have dictated Mueller’s appointment
to be head of the FBI, as he could re relied on to “let sleeping dogs lie.”
15. Two video productions are being generated by a couple of
documentary filmmakers. One is a DVD of a three-lecture series called “The
First Refuge of a Scoundrel: The Relationship Between Fascism and Religion.” To
learn more about this, visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4YPCdFu7OE.
In addition, there will soon be a documentary about Mr. Emory, titled “The
Anti-Fascist.” For more about this project, visit: http://www.theantifascist.com/.