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1994-05-02
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<text>
<title>
Corruption Blamed for BCCI Failure
</title>
<article>
<hdr>
Joint Publications Research Service, September 5, 1991
Political: Corruption Blamed for BCCI Failure
</hdr>
<body>
<p>By Anjum Ibrahim, "BCCI Fiasco" [Lahore, The Nation in English, 3
Aug 91, p. 6]
</p>
<p> The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) has
been in the headline news in nearly every country of the world.
Its links with international terrorism, specifically with Abu
Nidal credited with several hundred deaths, its drug money
laundering operations for people like Noriega, and its internal
corruption and incompetence spreading outwards to incorporate
prominent politicians around the world, including high-level
governmental bureaucrats, makes BCCI a scandal which will be
remembered in the annals of banking history.
</p>
<p> Strangely enough, the Pakistani view is divergent. Part of
the reason is that Agha Hassan Abedi, the Bank's chief, has
Pakistani nationality. He had also spread his tentacles very
effectively with Pakistan through his policy of hiring the
children of prominent Pakistanis, i.e, those resident Pakistani
who wished to work abroad and could not do so due to their
inability to procure working papers. BCCI was also known within
the banking circles in Pakistan to hire people on the basis of
nepotism. It is no wonder then that incompetence was one of the
charges levied against the Bank. But of course one cannot
dismiss all those working in the BCCI as incompetent. And there
is a very real fear that with the closure of the Bank, a
request made by the British government to the largest
shareholder of the Bank, namely the Emir of the United Arab
Emirates, many Pakistanis would become unemployed with little
or no prospects for gaining employment within the banking system
of any other country, including that of Pakistan. Thus the
employees of BCCI, largely Pakistanis, would suffer greatly.
This is despite the fact that Western experts believe that all
the charges levied against the BCCI were in effect due to the
connivance of a very small number of the top level managers of
the Bank and that the bulk of the employees were not taken into
confidence.
</p>
<p> The second reason for our government support to the BCCI top
management in Pakistan is due to its covert help extended to
what is being termed as our ability to make a nuclear bomb.
Perhaps this was the reason why our Prime Minister (PM) Nawaz
Sharif actually visited the ex-BCCI chief Mr. Abedi at his home
in Karachi recently. Typically, our PM ignored the fact that
this issue is responsible for the cessation of the U.S. aid
package to Pakistan and there is a real fear that the United
States may prevail on the international community to withdraw
aid from those countries involved in a nuclear program. And as
we are aware, in Pakistan our economy will not be viable unless
and until a certain minimum level of aid is incurred this year--a level which we have not really succeeded in procuring so
far. Thus Mr. Nawaz Sharif's hasty tacit support of Mr. Abedi,
evident after his visit, could have serious repercussions on
the whole economy.
</p>
<p> There is also support of the BCCI from those Pakistanis who
believe that the Bank was serving the Muslim world and more to
the point, taking money from the rich oil sheiks and
distributing it to the poor in the Third World in general and
the Muslim countries in particular. This once again is
considered a sham by the investigators of the Bank of England
and supported by the fact that poor Asian depositors of the
Bank are left without their savings and are clamoring for
justice. And according to The Sunday Times dated 21 July:
"Intelligence agencies from several Western countries, including
America and Israel, allegedly cooperated with the black network,
which was a 1,500-member organization run from BCCI's office in
Karachi, Pakistan." Thus the Robin Hood tactics of taking from
the rich to give to the poor was certainly not either the goal
or the target of the BCCI. All that the expected demise of the
Bank has done for Pakistan is to perhaps make it a pariah in
the international community and it is indeed unfortunate that
there is still official support for this Bank in the country.
</p>
<p> The State Bank of Pakistan has refused to shut down
operations of the BCCI in Pakistan in spite of the request to do
so by the British government. And the question we should be
asking ourselves is, what can be its cost to us? First of
course Britain gave us a loan amounting to 91.4 million dollars
in fiscal year 1989-90, part of which is probably still in the
pipeline which can be arrested. And secondly our exports of
7,224 million rupees to the United Kingdom (for July-March
1990-91) might be summarily stopped by the British government.
It is also relevant to note that Pakistan registered a trade
surplus with the United Kingdom in the year mentioned.
</p>
<p> Whatever the failures of the BCCI which forced it to arrest
all its operations in the West through legislation, nonetheless
it is essential that some regulatory mechanism applicable to the
banking system be in force for the protection of depositors. But
can blame and total responsibility accrue to the Central Bank?
Apparently not, according to The Economist, which states: "Like
any bank regulator, the Bank of England cannot be expected to
prevent fraud altogether. That would require a policemen in
every office (and even they could be bribed). Nor can it ensure
that, if massive fraud means that a bank must be closed,
depositors will not lose some money..." That is why the Bank
and its fellow regulators overseas, cannot be blamed merely for
having closed BCCI. Once a bank has been shown to be insolvent--which, because of the fraud this bank was--closure is the
only fair way to treat the depositors. If depositors were
merely warned, those who heard first would get all their cash
out first, leaving much less for the poorly informed or the
poorly connected. If the bank had been closed in July 1990 or
July 1987, depositors would still have lost money, and would
still be clamoring for compensation. Thus the question is the
time limit that a regulatory body ought to take from suspicion
of fraud to getting proof of the fraud to eventual closure of
the bank.
</p>
<p> The sequence of events for Pakistan are as follows: a) 13
years ago the Bank of England blocked BCCI from expanding its
branch network in the United Kingdom restricting it to a
secondary bank status; b) Under the 1987 Banking Act, the Bank
of England decided that BCCI was 'fit and proper'. The British
media feels that bribes may have been responsible for this
ruling; c) Senior BCCI officials were charged in 1988 for drug
money laundering. The indicted officials claimed that top-level
managers in BCCI knew and approved of such operations; d) In
1988, the Bank of England was worried about BCCI and started an
international college of regulators where it cooperated with
other countries in supervising the BCCI: e) The U.S. Banking
sub-committee learnt that BCCI "had an international reputation
for capital flight, tax fraud, and money laundering that far
exceeded the conduct charged" in the Florida indictment; f)
American authorities made requests to Price Waterhouse, a
British accounting firm, for information on BCCI. Bank of
England refused, saying that under the 1987 Banking Act it
could not reveal confidential information; g) In March 1990,
Price Waterhouse revealed serious holes in the BCCI accounts but
the BCCI still continued operations; h) In October the same
year, an American lawyer read a report accusing BCCI of the
"biggest fraud in history"; i) In June 1990, Vivian Ambrose, an
employee of BCCI, wrote a letter to Tone Benn alleging that the
BCCI had 'widespread corruption'; j) August 1990, BCCI moved
many of its account documents to Abu Dhabi; k) In January this
year, inquiries were made by the Bank of England and BCCI
operations shut down on July 5 this year in the United Kingdom.
</p>
<p> Th