Consideraciones generales

Founded in the 1970s by Middle Eastern financiers Agha Hasan Abedi and Swaleh Naqvi, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) swiftly spun a global net of shady deals involving (among others) the CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY(CIA), the MAFIA, international drug dealers, Arab terrorists, and

the usual cast of corrupt politicians (many of them influential leaders of the U.S. Democratic Party). Vol- umes could be written about BCCI’s crimes, but a December 1992 report from the U.S. Senate fairly summarized the bank’s illicit transactions.

BCCI’s unique criminal structure . . . was an essential component of its spectacular growth, and a guarantee of its eventual collapse. The structure was conceived by Abedi and managed by Naqvi for the specific purpose of evading regulation or control by governments. It functioned to frustrate the full understanding of BCCI’s operations by anyone.

Unlike any ordinary bank, BCCI was from its earli- est days made up of multiplying layers of entities, related to one another through an impenetrable series of holding companies, affiliates, subsidiaries, banks- within-banks, insider dealings and nominee relation- ships. By fracturing corporate structure, record keeping, regulatory review, and audits, the complex BCCI family of entities created by Abedi was able to evade ordinary legal restrictions on the movement of capital and goods as a matter of daily practice and rou- tine. In creating BCCI as a vehicle fundamentally free of government control, Abedi developed in BCCI an ideal mechanism for facilitating illicit activity by others,

including such activity by officials of many of the gov- ernments whose laws BCCI was breaking.

BCCI’s criminality included fraud by BCCI and BCCI customers involving billions of dollars; money laundering in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas; BCCI’s bribery of officials in most of those locations; support of terror- ism, arms trafficking, and the sale of nuclear technologies; management of prostitution; the commission and facilita- tion of income tax evasion, smuggling, and illegal immi- gration; illicit purchases of banks and real estate; and a panoply of financial crimes limited only by the imagina- tion of its officers and customers.

Among BCCI’s principal mechanisms for committing crimes were its use of shell corporations and bank con- fidentiality and secrecy havens; layering of its corporate structure; its use of front-men and nominees, guaran- tees and buy-back arrangements; back-to-back financial documentation among BCCI controlled entities, kick- backs and bribes, the intimidation of witnesses, and the retention of well-placed insiders to discourage govern- mental action.

The BCCI facade suffered its first major crack in 1988 with a Florida indictment for laundering drug money, but even then federal prosecutors failed to grasp the enormity of BCCI’s crimes, including infil- tration and ownership of major U.S. banks. Operat- ing in 73 nations and bribing officials in each, BCCI took full advantage of endemic corruption in

ARGENTINA, BANGLADESH, BOTSWANA, BRAZIL, CHINA, COLOMBIA, the CONGO, GHANA, GUATEMALA, INDIA, JAMAICA, KUWAIT, LEBANON, Mauritius, MOROCCO, NIGERIA, PAKISTAN, PANAMA, PERU, SAUDI ARABIA, SENEGAL, SRI LANKA, SUDAN, SURINAME, the

United States, ZAMBIA, and ZIMBABWE. By the time it

finally collapsed in the 1990s with a handful of its ranking leaders prosecuted for various crimes, BCCI had paved the way for a new millennium of corporate corruption. As summarized by Senate investigators:

Unanswered questions include, but are not limited to, the relationship between BCCI and the Banco Nazionale del Lavoro; the alleged relationship between the late CIA director WILLIAM CASEY and BCCI; the

extent of BCCI’s involvement in Pakistan’s nuclear pro- gram; BCCI’s manipulation of commodities and securi- ties markets in Europe and Canada; BCCI’s activities in India, including its relationship with the business empire of the Hinduja family; BCCI’s relationships with convicted Iraqi arms dealer Sarkis Sarkenalian,

Syrian drug trafficker, terrorist, and arms trafficker Monzer Al-Kassar, and other major arms dealers; the use of BCCI by central figures in the alleged “OCTOBER SURPRISE,” BCCI’s activities with the Central Bank of

Syria and with the Foreign Trade Mission of the Soviet Union in London; its involvement with foreign intelli- gence agencies; the financial dealings of BCCI directors with Charles Keating and several Keating affiliates and front-companies, including the possibility that BCCI related entities may have laundered funds for Keating to move them outside the United States; BCCI’s financing of commodities and other business dealings of interna- tional criminal financier Marc Rich; the nature, extent and meaning of the ownership of other major U.S. financial institutions by Middle Eastern political figures; the nature, extent, and meaning of real estate and finan- cial investments in the United States by major share- holders of BCCI; the sale of BCCI affiliate Banque de Commerce et Placement in Geneva, to the Cukorova Group of Turkey, which owned an entity involved in the BNL Iraqi arms sales, among others.

BELARUS

Belarus (also known as White Russia) has been vari- ously claimed throughout its history by Lithuania,

POLAND, and RUSSIA. It suffered more than most

nations in World War II, with seesaw battles between JOSEPH STALIN’s Red Army and ADOLF HITLER’s Wehrmacht, played out on its swampy soil.

When the Soviet CHERNOBYLpower plant exploded

in 1986, 70 percent of its nuclear fallout landed in Belarus, causing epidemic cancer and related ill- nesses. Belarus declared independence in August 1991, but its people had no taste for freedom. A new treaty with Russia in April 1997 stopped just short of a political merger. President Aleksandr Lukashenko (in power since January 1994) runs an authoritarian state that is widely denounced for its human-rights violations in the Stalinist mode. Accused of fielding death squads that have murdered dozens of dissidents since the late 1990s, Lukashenko was nonetheless reelected (under highly suspicious circumstances) on September 9, 2001.

BELGIUM

Since 57 B.C., a series of conquerors ranging from JULIUS CAESARto ADOLF HITLERhave used Belgium as

the gateway for attacks on more inviting parts of BELGIUM

Europe. At the same time, Belgian kings acquired an African empire that they pillaged brutally with utter disregard for the welfare of aboriginal peoples. Bel- gian control of the Congo and Ruanda-Urundi (now

RWANDA and BURUNDI) was not relinquished until

1960–62, after a final spasm of warfare along racial lines. Belgium has been rocked by incessant scandal since 1991 when a deputy prime minister was slain by still-unidentified contract killers. In 1996 disclo- sure of the Marc Dutroux child-sex-and-murder ring revealed a morass of perversion and government cor- ruption that had permitted predatory killers to act with near impunity. Two years later Belgian states- man and former NATO official Willy Claes was con- victed of bribery. In 1999 public officials confessed to concealing evidence that most of Belgium’s poultry was contaminated with cancer-causing dioxin. New prime minister Guy Verhofstadt began sweeping reforms that same year, but his efforts were over- shadowed by Belgium’s odd claim of “universal juris- diction” over WAR CRIMES, allegedly permitting

Belgian courts to extradite and try citizens of any nation for atrocities committed anywhere on Earth. A cast of suspects led by President George W. Bush staunchly denied Belgian jurisdiction outside its own borders, and Belgium scrapped the law on July 12, 2003, in a bid to keep U.S. goodwill.

See also BUSH DYNASTY.

BELIZE

Sandwiched between MEXICO and GUATEMALA in

Central America, Belize was ruled, or “supervised,” by England (as British Honduras) until September 21, 1981. Guatemala delayed recognition of Belize’s national sovereignty for another decade, and it still claims rights to more than half of Belize. Negotia- tions before the Organization of American States has thus far failed to resolve the conflict, leaving an atmosphere ripe for subversion, spying, and cross- border guerrilla raids.