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- <text id=89TT2416>
- <title>
- Sep. 18, 1989: Business Notes:Banking
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Sep. 18, 1989 Torching The Amazon
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- BUSINESS, Page 65
- Business Notes
- BANKING
- Credit Where None Was Due
- </hdr><body>
- <p> A lending scheme that apparently took place on a branch
- manager's home computer in Georgia has grown into Italy's
- biggest banking scandal in years. Last week the disgrace claimed
- the two top officers of Italy's largest bank, the state-owned
- Banca Nazionale del Lavoro. Chairman Nerio Nesi, 64, and
- Director General Giacomo Pedde, 62, resigned after the bank's
- board heard the results of an initial probe into a scam in which
- the bank's Atlanta branch gave $2.6 billion worth of
- unauthorized export credits to Iraq to buy machinery and
- agricultural goods.
- </p>
- <p> The branch manager, Christopher Drogoul, apparently issued
- the credits and kept the records at home. Drogoul, whose
- possible motives are still being investigated, has been
- dismissed. The Italian bank contends that it will suffer no
- losses from the scheme because the credits were guaranteed by
- U.S. and Iraqi agencies, but banking experts believe debt-laden
- Iraq may be hard pressed to make good if the deals go sour.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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