Anyone remember BCCI? (Bank of Credit and Commerce International). According to Wikipedia, the bank became the focus (in 1991) of the world’s worst financial scandal. It was discovered that the bank was involved in (among other things) money laundering, bribery, support of terrorism, arms trafficking and the sale of nuclear technologies.
So why bother digging up old news? I’ll tell you why, while reading ‘A Game As Old As Empire,’ in particular a section titled: ‘BCCI’S Double Game: Banking on America, Banking on Jihad,’ by Lucy Komisar, I came across this little interesting tidbit of information:
“…A decade later, as I began to focus on investigating the secret offshore banking system, I learned that, in a reach for market share that American business analysts might marvel at, BCCI had become the central banker for everyone involved in regional black ops, running accounts for the arms and drug traffickers, the mujahadeen, the Pakistanis, and the CIA.
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, depositors, and services. It wa a shell bank set up to finance the jihad and in fact was simply a correspondent accont in the Banca del Gottardo, the former Swiss subsidiary of the corrupt Banco Ambrosiano (“the Vatican bank”), which collapsed in 1982 after looting customers’ accounts of more than $1 billion. (That story famously inspired a subplot of The Godfather Part III.) BCCI also handled money from the drug trade and payoffs to Pakistani military and officials.
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…”
Read the book, if you can. It’s an eye-opener.
