CAMEROON
BCCI developed a number of relationships with governmental entities in the impoverished Central African country of Cameroon, including the United Nation's account there and the U.S. embassy's account there. But the most critical relationship for BCCI in Cameroon was with the country's ministry of finance, which, after BCCI began making payments to its officials, agreed to borrow funds from BCCI on which BCCI charged Cameroon interest, and then to redeposit them in non-interest bearing accounts, benefiting no one other than BCCI and the bribed officials.(48)
At the same time, BCCI went into a joint venture with the government of Cameroon to finance BCCI's bank in Cameroon. The joint venture was successful for both BCCI, which held 60 percent of the banks shares, and for Kanga Zamb Jean, who was previously Cameroon's finance secretary and governor of a province of Cameroon before he became chairman and managing director of the bank. In that capacity, Jean was officially representing the interests of the Republic of Cameroon, which held a minority interest in the bank. In fact, Jean was also lining his own pockets.(49)
BCCI's relationships with Cameroon were flourishing by the time of BCCI's indictment in Tampa on drug money laundering. In 1988, Cameroon started directing oil export financing through BCCI, as a result of payments being made by BCCI to people in the finance department of the Cameroon national oil company. The payments were small, amounting to no more than $3,000 to $4,000 per person, but enough to secure BCCI what it needed in such a low-income country. In return for this small investment, BCCI benefitted a number of ways. As Nazir Chinoy, Paris regional manager in this period, explained:
The deposits from the purchasers of the oil are kept from 7-10 days in Paris. You can use that money to make a small profit there. But more important than the deposit was the exchange. The money is kept in Paris then is converted into French francs. There is an exchange profit to be made for BCC Paris as well as for BCC Cameroon.(50)
BCCI Cameroon became a cash cow for BCCI, with deposits amounting to between 90 and 100 million pounds sterling. When BCCI was closed globally, Cameroon was caught with most of that money still deposited — including a substantial amount of government funds — amounting to about $90 million, which for Cameroon constituted a substantial loss.(51) Of those funds, approximately $63 million amounted to real deposits by Cameroon that had been discovered by BCCI's auditors, but never recorded by BCCI on the books. BCCI had kept the deposits off-the-books in order to use the cash to finance other BCCI operations elsewhere.(52) Later, BCCI's chief financial officer, Massihur Rahman, was to refer to the treatment of Cameroon's as unrecorded deposits at BCCI as "major fraud."(53)
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