Word: cayman
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Previously undisclosed audits show that Bank of America provided a $2.5 million loan in 1976 to start up a B.C.C.I. subsidiary in the Cayman Islands known as International Credit & Investment Co. Overseas. According to Federal Reserve documents, I.C.I.C. Overseas was the vehicle that held most of B.C.C.I.'s loans to privileged insiders, as well as its secret and illegal holdings in First American Bank in Washington...
...attempt to comply with Western regulators' demands for acceptable profit and loss statements. U.S. and British authorities would naturally scoff at that explanation. They contend that B.C.C.I. flourished as a criminal enterprise largely because it was carefully constructed to take advantage of such tax havens as Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands, which provide virtually no regulation...
...allowed the bank to operate virtually without regulation all over the world. The bank's organizational web consisted of dozens of shell companies, offshore banks, branches and subsidiaries in 70 countries. It was incomprehensible even to its own financial officers and auditors. The bank's extensive use of unregulated Cayman Islands accounts enabled it to hide almost anything. The bank's complex organization and unique method of accounting -- longhand in paper ledgers, written in Pakistan's Urdu language -- make it unlikely that most of the missing money will be traced. Nor is it likely that anyone will ever know just...
...more deposit gathering became the bank's chief goal. At annual meetings, founder Abedi would harangue his employees for days on the importance of luring deposits. That was probably because billions of dollars were vanishing. At the highest levels, B.C.C.I. officials whisked deposits into secret accounts in the Cayman Islands. These accounts constituted a hidden bank within B.C.C.I., known only to founder Abedi and a few others. From those accounts, B.C.C.I. would lend massive amounts to curry favor with governments -- as in its $1 billion loan to Nigeria -- or to buy secret control of companies...
Price Waterhouse in the Cayman Islands, an entity separate from the British firm, had earlier performed another fascinating audit. TIME viewed an Oct. 18, 1985, Report of the Auditors to the Members of International Credit & Investment Co. (Overseas) Ltd., which said, "Customer deposits consist of confidential accounts which are not conducted as open accounts requiring periodic dispatch of statements. Furthermore, because of company policy we have not been able to confirm any deposit balances directly with customers, and therefore it is not possible for our examination of such accounts to extend beyond the amounts recorded." With this highly unusual qualification...