Word: abedi
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...unravel the role of the Bank of Credit & Commerce International in the world's first truly global financial scandal, TIME has learned that what looked like a bank was in fact a multipurpose, multinational enterprise. In the past two decades, the organization created by Pakistani financier Agha Hasan Abedi has become, among other things, a powerful player in the netherworld of international arms. Using the clandestine routes and alliances originally created for money laundering, B.C.C.I. has brokered, financed and, in some instances, initiated transactions that have often upset the uneasy technomilitary balance sought by the U.S. and other major powers...
Though the discovery of irregularities led to the shutdown of B.C.C.I.'s banking operations last July, Abedi's $20 billion "bank" is in fact far more complex. It is a vast, stateless, multinational corporation that deploys its own intelligence agency, complete with a paramilitary wing and enforcement units, known collectively as the "black network." It maintains its own diplomatic relations with foreign countries through bank "protocol officers" who use seemingly limitless amounts of cash to pursue Abedi's goals. B.C.C.I. trades massively and for its own account in commodities ranging from grain, rice, cement and coffee to timber, carpets...
...B.C.C.I. is functioning as the owners' representative for Pakistan's nuclear-bomb project," says an international businessman who has worked through the bank to supply Pakistan's nuclear-weapons and missile industry. "In the West, Abedi presented one face, but in the Muslim world, he and his bankers have always promoted themselves as a Third World, Muslim bank that would eventually dominate global finances by using oil dollars and Abedi's network of influence. And he whispered in the ears of the sheiks and the generals that he would bring them the Muslim bomb...
...pressed efforts to extradite Inam ul-Haq, a retired Pakistani brigadier, on charges that he masterminded an abortive 1987 plot to smuggle to Pakistan an American speciality steel used to enrich weapons-grade uranium. B.C.C.I reportedly provided credit for the deal. But Pakistan, home of B.C.C.I. founder Agha Hasan Abedi, denied -- as it has in the past -- that it seeks to develop nuclear arms, and said the government had no connection with Inam, who was arrested by German authorities in Frankfurt last month on an international warrant...
...principal officers for fraud, bribery, grand larceny and money laundering after a two- year investigation led by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. B.C.C.I., said Morgenthau, had looted depositors of more than $5 billion in "the largest bank fraud in world history." Named as defendants were Agha Hasan Abedi, the Pakistani founder of B.C.C.I., and countryman Swaleh Naqvi, who had been the bank's chief operating officer. But bringing the pair to trial could prove impossible. Pakistan said last week it will refuse to extradite the ailing Abedi, 68, who is a hero in his homeland for organizing the Third World...