The NSC was funneling arms to the Nicaraguan contras before Oliver North’s resupply network was operational. US aid to Saudi Arabia was being forwarded to the contras via the Karachi, Pakistan-based Bank of Credit & Commerce International (BCCI). [212]
While House of Saud-bound money was being diverted towards the contras, one of BCCI’s biggest initial depositors was the Shah of Iran, whose Swiss BCCI accounts would come to rival the sums which Ed Wilson had flown into Nugan Hand Bank’s Swiss branch. With the ruling families of the Twin Pillars on board, BCCI would become the mixing bowl into which Persian Gulf petrodollars were stirred with generous helpings of drug money to finance worldwide covert operations for the CIA and its Israeli Mossad and British MI6 partners.
BCCI was the bank of choice for the world’s most notorious dictators, including the Somoza family, Saddam Hussein, Philippine strongman Ferdinand Marcos and Haiti’s Jean-Claude “Papa Doc” Duvalier. The South African apartheid regime used BCCI, as did Manuel Noriega, who strode into BCCI’s Panama branch regularly to collect his $200,000/year CIA paycheck.
BCCI was favorite laundry mat for the Medellin Cartel and for the world’s newest heroin kingpins, the leaders of the CIA-controlled factions of the Afghan mujahadeen. BCCI financed Reagan’s secret arms sales to Iran and worked with Robert Calvi’s Banco Ambrosiano. It was the conduit for dirty money generated by Mossad fugitive financier Marc Rich and washed the funny money emanating from the now bankrupt Enron in its reincarnated state as Chicago-based Pinnacle Bank Group. [213] Frequenting the Karachi headquarters of BCCI was valued account-holder Osama bin Laden.
Loyal to the Bank of America
With branches in 76 countries, BCCI dealt in conventional and nuclear weapons, gold, drugs, mercenary armies, intelligence and counter-intelligence. These interests were often shielded behind more legitimate fronts such as the shipping of Honduran coffee or Vietnamese beans. The bank had close relations with the CIA, Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service, the Israeli Mossad and Saudi intelligence agencies. It was the financial glue that bonded numerous seemingly disparate public scandals together. BCCI’s main stockholders were monarchs and wealthy oil sheiks from the GCC nations.
BCCI was founded in 1972 in Pakistan by Agha Hasan Abedi, a close friend of Pakistani military dictator Zia ul-Huq. Abedi initially solicited deposits for the bank from expatriate Pakistanis working in the UAE, but BCCI took its wings when Bank of America put up $2.5 million for a 30% stake in BCCI. At that time Bank of America was the largest bank in the world, controlled by N.M. Rothschild & Sons. [214]
The “N” stands for Nathan, who once loaned French tyrant Napoleon five million pounds at the same time he was loaning his British Waterloo adversary the Duke of Wellington money to equip his army. Nathan Rothschild later commented of the incident, “It was the best business I have ever done.” The “M” stands for Mayer, a student of the esoteric Jewish Cabala who launched the Rothschild banking dynasty with embezzled money and acquired nobility titles for the family by the early 19th Century. In 1885 Queen Victoria baronized Nathan’s grandson, while the brothers conducted global transactions for governments in England, France, Prussia, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Portugal, the Germanic states and Brazil. They were bankers to the Crowns of Europe with investments as far afield as the US, India, Cuba and Australia. [215]