Talk:Bank of Credit and Commerce International

Source of quotes?

• "support of terrorism, arms trafficking, and the sale of nuclear technologies;... the commission and facilitation of income tax evasion, smuggling, and illegal immigration; illicit purchases of banks and real estate"
• "to avoid centralized regulatory review... [with the objective] to keep their affairs secret, to commit fraud on a massive scale, and to avoid detection"
• "almost certainly" insolvent
• "bewildered" with BCCI

There's some material in quotation marks with no specific source indicated. Where are these from? --←Hob 17:13, 2005 May 19 (UTC)

The source of the first two quotes, as well as the fourth quote, is the Senate Foreign Relations Committee report on the BCCI Affair. Chapter 4 for the first two quotes, and Chapter 3 for the fourth quote. Wish I felt confident enough in my editing skills to change the article. --Zenjibar 11:58, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Affected investors

Is it worth mentioning the disproportianate effect on ethnic minority investors (at least in London), who saw BCCI as a "black bank", and for that reason chose to deposit their funds there? --Rich Farmbrough 20:03, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Probably, but since this is a racial matter, I suggest making sure of it with some references. --Maru (talk) Contribs 01:37, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Bank of Crooks and Criminals International

that was the sarcasm name of the company when it has had been liquidated.

i thought it was reffered to as the bank of conman and cocaine snorters international, especially by Private Eye magazine? 81.77.189.107 19:37, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Mark Rich Connection

Details on Marc Rich need to be clarified. He was indicted by US and left the US in 1983, well before the sandstorm report.

GA nomination

This is on hold for 7 days. Find verifiable sources for the criminal claims and footnote them. Rlevse 02:09, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

GA failed due to no response to suggestions after 7 days. Rlevse 17:38, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Death of reporter?

I have a memory of a brief news item from (I think) the 1980s: A reporter was found dead in a hotel or motel in the southeast U.S. (maybe Kentucky, Tennessee or Missouri). He was said to have been investigating BCCI intensively. As I recall, there was no evidence of foul play. I know this is rather vague and sketchy. I put it out there FWIW. --ChrisWinter 15:09, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

We've already got a good article on him: see Danny Casolaro. --maru (talk) contribs 03:13, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Closue

How do I contact BCCI?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't BCCI close down a long time ago? --Gwern (contribs) 21:13 12 December 2006 (GMT)

You can contact the liquidators of BCCI by going to http://www.bcci.info/

Clark Clifford Merge

This section should be moved out of the biography article. It places undue weight on the Bank issue and centers around one small aspect of his life, but the scandal does seem to be an important part of the bank's history. --Strothra 01:17, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

4th largest Bank?

Hello. I am no kind of expert, but I am very surprised to read that BCCI was the worlds 4th largest bank, especially with assets of only $25 000 000 000. I'll have a second look for information on this... Peace, 195.137.96.79 23:09, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

There is no possible way for this to be true, and I have removed the claim. BCCI may have been the 4th largest bank failure, the 4th largest bank fraud, the 4th largest bank in Pakistan, the 4th largest...whatever but certainly not the 4th largest bank in the world. The original author may possibly return and explain what he/she had in mind. Ringbark 16:26, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

It was the 4th largest private (unlisted) bank in the world at it's peak.82.35.68.17 22:32, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

---

I have updated the main article with some references with regards to the origins of the figures and claims, hope it helps. Syedshoaib (talk) 11:24, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Bath a director?

I'm not as familiar with BCCI as some others are, but I don't think James Bath was a director of BCCI, at least not according to "The Outlaw Bank". (One of the guys he worked as an agent for (Khalid bin Mahfouz) may have been...) Orville Eastland 03:09, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Majority Shareholder View

Keeping the spirit of Wikipedia alive by reflecting all sides of the story and not just the opinions of one side of the story. the recent additions that have been created to the article by myself reflect the view and facts held by the majority shareholders of the institution that the article refers to. In this case it reflects the views of shareholders, giverments, and employees of the institution outside of the U.S and U.K where the institution was also deemed to be extremely active (e.g.Pakistan, the U.A.E, Saudi Arabia and the Middle East and Africa (MENA) Region).

It is only fair and in line with Wikipedia principles that any such material, views and facts, either verifiable through electronic links on the world wide web or hardcopy transcripts and records in possession of controlled persons should be brought to light. I would like to acknoeldge responsibility of such material and content, as displayed on the Wikipedia pages of the article.

Moreover, I believe that it does well to balance the neutrality of the article and thus making it stand in good stead to be considered for a good article nomination and maybe even featured article status. I am also willing to write further expansions of the summary I have written in the intro to further expand on my assertions. I hope that this article will then truly reflect the neutral viewpoints of all the parties concerned and thus reflect good on Wikipedia.

Just wanted to add one more interesting point of view; The fact of the matter is some of the biggest stakeholders/ creditors/ depositors that the bank had are individuals or entitites so much shrouded in mystery that it is difficult to obtain proper referencing for such material except for knowledge one may have due to word of mouth or due to their affiliations with the bank. I consider myself to have been a shareholder of the bank and am in the company of several employees/shareholders. The biggest clue to all this is the fact that the regulators or reporters never even got a hold of the founder of the bank Mr.Abedi who moved back to his hometown of Karachi (where I have a home aswell), and to this day there are individuals who have had affiliations with the bank whose stories are not in the public domain especially in parts of the world shrouded heavily in mystery such as Abu Dhabi (where I also have a home)

Thanks Syedshoaib (talk) 10:46, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

GA Review

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

   The writing is mediocre. There are some typos, and the writing just isn't all that good

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

The biggest problem is the lack of references. Also, the writing is not very good. Thus, it fails GA. Julian^{(Leap Day 2008)} 18:53, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I concur with this assessment. This article is in need of good copyediting. Ask a volunteer. Anne Teedham (talk) 18:45, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

A bit talkative are we?

Is it worth noting in the article that the record for longest speech in legal history was broken twice during a hearing for liquidating the bank? The defense spoke for 119 days laying out their side of the case. Hellbus (talk) 03:51, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

It seems like this article has had some bias added

As I read through this article it looks like the article was written with a definite bias in favor of this bank. Several references to the charges against the bank being "obviously not true". If it was so obvious that the bank was operating honestly then why was it shut down and liquidated?

I believe that people sympathetic to the banks creators have made additions to this article and that it should be reviewed to make sure that bias has not crept into the article.

I may well be that the BCCI was shut down due to political influence or by competitors pressure on governments, but some evidence needs to be sited to back up such a claim. As it is no such claim is made in the article, just several statements made which state that charges against it were not true because "investors got back most of their money" or some such.

It just seems to me that if you are going to contradict charges made by the monitoring agencies which resulted in putative action you need to make more of a case. Otherwise it seems like the article is taking a position.

Abbracus (talk) 01:47, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

the article as it stands currently seems very biased. there is no discussion of their financing of arms dealing or drug smuggling, and the material as it stands give the impression that this was a basically functional institution but with unconventional accounting, something far from the truth.

The claim that 90% of monies were recovered, which is the main plank in the argument that the bank was solvent/not a fraud, is not substantiated by the stated reference, which states recovery was 75%. I changed 90 to 75, but the arguments based on the 90% figure should be deleted/amended. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.229.236.215 (talk) 03:51, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The section about lending practices seems extremely biased. There are no sources for the content there, a lot of it seems to be leaning towards the bank's favor, and the writing style is reminiscent of a high school or college student. Ch kisama (talk) 17:04, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Bias removed if no sources given

the article is not only biased but makes claims that are amount to cheap conspiray theories. The claims give no reference or proof, and are so unprecise as to amount to pub-politics:

E.g.:

"The western financial community and the western governments were alarmed at BCCI's success in lucrative markets..." "The western governments closed in to shut down the third-world-dream once and for all"

Who is the western financial community and who are "the" western governments? The Articles mixes serious sources with a few cheap anti-western remarks. I have removed all that quote no source and that are to vague to even start exploring. This sort of rubbish will eventually kill Wikipedia! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.111.52.101 (talk) 05:59, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Neutrality Dispute- Lending Practices

The neutrality of the "Lending Practices" section seems highly questionable. First of all there are absolutely no sources for the information it contains. There are several very serious allegations that are made not only towards the BCCI, but to other entities as well, and it is highly irresponsible to say such things without any sort of evidence. Second it is obvious that the author of this content was leaning in favor of the bank. Third, and I realize that this probably isn't that important, but the writing style reminds me of the way a high school or college student would write. Ch kisama (talk) 17:12, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Trivia

I have no provenance at hand for what I added, except my memory of newspaper reports at the time.

Today (18-01-2011) I changed the title of the ruler of Abu Dhabi. The Emirate does not have an Emir, as one might expect, but a Sheikh. The ruling Sheikh of Abu Dhabi at the time was Sheikh Zayed.Prudentia (talk) 11:49, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

BCCI case close to breaking open

I wrote in some detail in Treasure Islands about the super-hyper-ultra-corrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI,) which provided a shocking case study into the underbelly of global offshore finance. As a story, the BCCI case has everything: drugs, terrorism, sex, nuclear weapons, corruption, tax havens, secrecy – you name the vice, and it was probably an integral part of BCCI’s business model.

I noted how offshore was the core mechanism that BCCI used to escape regulation and to create deniability, and also that Britain, which (along with the secrecy jurisdictions of Cayman and Luxembourg) hosted one of BCCI’s central nodes, deliberately covered up a huge amount of information, so the public could not know who was involved in the murk.

Well, things may be about to change.

Yesterday Prem Sikka, Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex, won a remarkable court victory in the BCCI case, which opens the road to us finding out more about the financial institutions that were most implicated in the matter. I provided a witness statement in support of his case, citing Treasure Islands and the importance of understanding BCCI as a case study in understanding tax havens.

http://treasureislands.org/bcci-case-close-to-breaking-open/

http://treasureislands.org/

http://www.informationtribunal.gov.uk/DBFiles/Decision/i544/20110711%20Decision%20EA20100054.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.89.208.254 (talk) 23:57, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

The above is a cut+paste (not by me) from this source: http://treasureislands.org/bcci-case-close-to-breaking-open/ Luzzy fogic (talk) 11:57, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

You're kidding, right? My father personally worked at this bank, it was brought down by the consortium of western banks who didn't wish to see their monopoly over the banking industry around the world broken. ^That is just as verifiable as the garbage that is this article. This is NOT a wikipedia article at all, and reading it I feel it would more belong on a conspiracy theory page. Clean up this article at once. 119.155.6.47 (talk) 11:23, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

CenTrust and Gerstein-Bailey

The article originally included the claim that "F. Lee Bailey and Florida state prosecutor Richard Gerstein were the directors of CenTrust Federal Savings Bank, a failed satellite of BCCI; this would eventually lead to Bailey's disbarment." This is not true. Bailey and Gerstein were partners in the law firm Bailey Gerstein Carhart Rashkind Dresnick & Rippingille (See Gibson v. Resolution Trust Corporation. The firm was hired to manage an indemnification fund belonging to the bank. Bailey and Gerstein were never directors of the bank. Baily was disbarred in Florida for misconduct involving his handling of funds belonging to his client Claude DuBoc, as described in the Wikipedia article on Bailey. This case had nothing to do with CenTrust. Do not add false statements attributing criminal activity to living persons into Wikipedia articles. Rgr09 (talk) 13:47, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

problems with article

There are several problems with the article. Apparently there was at one point an intent to gather references to legal cases involving BCCI here. There are a vast number of these, many of them by no means notable or important. I've deleted two of these which were not referenced elsewhere in Wikipedia, and/or whose significance in BCCI's travails was not correctly represented. I'll come back and take a look at the remaining cases. These should be relevant to the story of BCCI to be presented in this article. Major banks are often involved in legal cases; unless it had a special significance for the bank, there is no reason to put links to all of them here.

There are also problems with sources. Trento is not a reasonable source for basic facts here. He is interested in the supposed intelligence links of the bank; this should have a separate section and Trento should go there. There are a vast number of sources for the basic facts of the story, any one of which is superior to Trento. Another questionable source is information from the website of Deloitte, the BCCI liquidators. These are now dead links and apparently presented somewhat different versions of their massive suit against BoE than appears elsewhere.

In general the article is confusingly structured and short of references. I'll look for better sources as time allows. Rgr09 (talk) 09:15, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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Unfortunately I am not sure how to handle this bot's changes. I have changed sourcecheck to checked = true, even though one of the source was bad; let me know if that is not the right way to handle this.

Checking the first edit to the case study link, this still goes to a 404 page not found error. I have therefore deleted it. The second link now goes to an archived version of the original page, so I've left it. Note that Deloitte and Touche, as the company was called at the time, were the liquidators for the bank. The archived webpage is basically a 500 word advertisement, and is not to be taken seriously, especially with regard to the claim that they persuaded Abu Dhabi to drop its claims against the Bank of England. The archived page does put their claim to have recovered 75% of creditors' funds in writing, so I'll leave it up, but that doesn't mean it's true. Rgr09 (talk) 09:03, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Lead revisions

The second paragraph of the lead was recently changed to add the claim that "BCCI avoided scrutiny by serving the covert needs of certain nations." Most of the section "CIA funding to the Afghan Mujahideen and the Contras" was then added again after this. The claim needs a concrete claim and a source. The Kerry Committee report has a long section on the CIA and BCCI; this would be an appropriate source to look for something concrete. Cite it if there's something there. I've read it. I don't see anything like that. The duplication of the section on "CIA funding" here is both redundant and confusing for anyone who bothers to read further below. I've deleted both these additions. Please discuss here. The section on "CIA funding" is also highly problematic. I will put this in a separate section to make discussion more convenient. Rgr09 (talk) 12:06, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good, with solid reasoning. Thanks for pulling this back - a poor edit on my part. Rock on. Jmg38 (talk) 04:44, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Revisions in multiple sections

I have now revised several section, as follows:

The section on "Lending practices" had a very ancient 'improve references' tag; in fact, there were references from Truell and Gurwmin's book. I think these are adequate, so I removed the tag.

"Lending practices" also included subsections on "Funding to criminals and dictators", "CIA funding to the Afghan Mujahideen and the Contras", and "After the decline of Soviet Union". None of these are related to BCCI lending practices. The bank was accused of laundering money for criminals, not lending them money. I have restructured the first two as separate paragraphs under a new section on "Money laundering."

An article by Sirota and Baskin is still cited in the first paragraph of "Money laundering" for the claim that Abu Nidal and the Medellin cartel both had accounts at BCCI. Sirota and Baskin also claim that "Among the stated goals of [BCCI's] Pakistani founder were to 'fight the evil influence of the West,' and finance Muslim terrorist organizations." There are serious problems with this. Overall, the article is a relic of the 2004 presidential campaign, not a reliable source for the twists and turns of the BCCI case. I will replace with a better source ASAP.

Even worse is the section on the CIA and BCCI. One source for this is the Kerry and Brown report on The BCCI Affair, available from FAS in a draft form from December 1992. The article ignores this and instead says, "The CIA also worked with BCCI in arming and financing the Afghan mujahideen during the Afghan War against the Soviet Union, using BCCI to launder proceeds from trafficking heroin grown in the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands, boosting the flow of narcotics to European and U.S. markets", citing a webpage from Michel Chossudovsky's Global Research Institute. This webpage is not a reliable source on this topic; Chossudovsky gives no sources for his claim except a grossly misleading quote from Time, and handwaving from Alfred M. McCoy that doesn't even mention BCCI. I removed Chossudovsky completely; any articles that make such claims need to have reliable documentation. This leaves only information on Iran-Contra, derived from a Time article. The article is from Time's website, where the date is strangely wrong; in fact, the article is not from 2001, but from 1991. This is a problem, since this was still early in the investigation. There are errors in the article; for example, it claims that NSC funds "were deposited into a B.C.C.I. account maintained by contra leader Adolfo Calero." Time later issued a retraction of this claim. If I have time, I will add more on this from a later source.

Following this revised section on "Money laundering" there was originally a section on BCCI's 'philanthropy'. This section had no sources at all. A request for improvements tag was put up in 2012; since none were forth coming

Finally, I took the subsection from "Lending practices" called "After the decline of Soviet Union" and made it a new section called "Investigations begin", which is what this paragraph is really about. I deleted one sentence:

The so-called C-Chase investigation began when it was apparent the Soviet Union was weakening and Washington lost interest in funding the mujahideen.

This sentence was apparently intended to explain why the United States and Britain began to investigate BCCI. Again it needs a source. On the face of it, it doesn't even make sense, the investigation began in 1986! Who said that in 1986 'it was apparent the Soviet Union was weakening' ?? Who said that in 1986 'Washington lost interest in funding the mujahideen' ??

This section is followed by "Sandstone Report". This is actually out of sequence, but I will have to save fixing this for another day. Rgr09 (talk) 14:05, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

See also

The see also section included links to articles that were already linked in the main body; it also had irrelevant links to things like the Nugan Hand Bank and Arbusto Energy. These had nothing to do with BCCI. I've deleted all of them. Kamal Adham is also linked; in fact he should be in the article, since he was part of the scandal; if he is ever put in, the see also link for him should go too. Rgr09 (talk) 15:48, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

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Bank of Crooks and Criminals International, cont'd

I notice that on 10 September 2007 someone mentioned BCCI's nickname in this discussion forum but it seems that this bit of information was never included in the article itself. As BCCI has been widely referred to as the Bank of Crooks and Criminals International in most publications since its demise in 1991, as well as when it was fully operational among people in the know, I feel this bit of information should be included in the article, but I don't know exactly where. It is surely much more than a bit of trivia. --Oclupak (talk) 08:27, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Connection to Jeffrey Epstein

Didn't Steven Hoffenberg say that Jeffrey Epstein had a connection to the Bank of Credit and Commerce International? 173.88.246.138 (talk) 00:38, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

B.C.C.I. report

Didn't the U.S. Senate's B.C.C.I. report (which was discussed in a 1992 article in the New York Times) find that the Bank of Credit and Commerce International was involved in the sex trafficking of minors, apparently for VIPs? If so, why isn't this mentioned in the current version of this Wikipedia article? 173.88.246.138 (talk) 00:41, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Can you find a link to the Senate report, or the 1992 NYT article? Pecopteris (talk) 05:28, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Potential sources

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/03/19/bcci-clients-offered-prostitutes-hill-told/4670bc66-fb9e-4cb4-a0c6-5e43e1258e36/

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/may/17/files-close-bcci-banking-scandal Pecopteris (talk) 05:37, 1 September 2023 (UTC)