Word: bcci
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...BCCI denies any pervasive corruption. U.S. Customs officials, though, say the bank laundered $14 million in narcotics funds for its undercover agents and considerably more for real criminals. They allege that BCCI was a greenback laundry for the Medellin cartel, the ruthless Colombian mob controlled in part by Pablo Escobar Gaviria and Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez that supplies most of the cocaine entering...
...accused launderers knew their business well, authorities say. By rapidly shuffling ill-gotten cash through a kaleidoscopic array of banks and shell corporations around the world, BCCI allegedly obscured the source of the money, then returned untraceable, "clean" funds to narcotics kingpins. Said a senior U.S. Customs official: "It has given us a window into the world of international money laundering like nothing we've had before...
Besides the alleged laundering services described in the indictments, BCCI has been accused of handling secret accounts for such clients as Panama's allegedly drug-dealing dictator General Manuel Noriega and Saudi financier Adnan Khashoggi. According to congressional testimony made public last week, Amjad Awan, a former BCCI officer arrested at the phony stag party, told a Senate subcommittee last month that he had made political payoffs for Noriega out of a BCCI account. In 1986 Khashoggi transferred $12 million from a BCCI account in Monte Carlo to an arms dealer to help purchase weapons used in the Iran-contra...
Founded in 1973 by Agha Hasan Abedi, a native of Pakistan, BCCI operates 400 branches in 73 countries. The bank is owned by just 51 shareholders, including members of the Saudi royal family. Among the BCCI officers arrested last week were top managers of the bank's Panamanian, Latin American and French divisions...