CONGO
BCCI's situation in the Congo was different from its situation in many other countries, in that the best known example of its criminality emanated from government cheating, rather than BCCI's.
Originally, BCCI had purchased government securities, at a discount, under an agreement by which the government promised to repay BCCI, and then the government had, after making some of the repayments, failed to follow through on the deal. Thus, BCCI's original wrongdoing was merely its creation of a mechanism for repayment through skimming off commodities transactions. However, BCCI then wound up paying bribes only after Congo officials failed to honor the deal worked out originally. In essence, BCCI made the payoffs to protect itself after it had been the victim of fraud by the Congo.
As Nazir Chinoy advised the Subcommittee, in August 1985, BCCI had worked out what looked like a profitable arrangement with the Government of the Congo by purchasing notes issued by the Congo in the range of $65 million to $67 million. These notes had been originally purchased by Mohsen Hujaj, a Lebanese contractor, with extensive contacts in the Congo. Hujaj accepted the notes from the Congo in payment for services he had performed after the government proved unable to pay under the terms of its contract with Hujaj. In a three-way deal, Hujaj got the government to acknowledge this indebtedness to BCCI and agree to certain repayments starting every three months.
A complex scheme was devised to insure that BCCI would be repaid on the notes without the government of the Congo having to acknowledge the payments or set aside funding for them. The Congo government placed 17 million in deposits in dollar terms in BCCI Paris, while BCCI was given the right to handle funds generated through the sale of oil and to take a charge off the proceeds of these sales. Under the terms of the deal, the oil sales were made from the Government of the Congo to a French company called ELF. ELF paid the money to an offshore account in a Swiss bank which had lent Congo $60 million. When the oil proceeds came in, the balance after paying for the oil would be sent to BCCI Paris, which got about $20 million of the proceeds and would use this for repayment on the notes. The arrangements worked well until January 1986, when suddenly the money stopped coming in from the Swiss bank.(58)
With some difficulty, BCCI learned from the Swiss bank that the government of the Congo had repaid the Swiss bank directly for its lending, and in the future they took payment directly for the oil from ELF, bypassing BCCI entirely. In response, BCCI turned once again to a tried and tested technique — bribery. As Chinoy explained:
We had to make expensive presents to the finance minister to get much of our money out. We were still owed $40 million by 1987 and having difficulty with the Lebanese, Hujaj, who threatened to get me killed because we were holding $11 million of his deposits at BCCI which were pledged. We released $6 million and had to find other means of securing repayment on the rest.(59)
In the meantime, French authorities, under the leadership of Jacques Chirac, had recognized the Congo's parlous financial condition, and convened a meeting of bankers in an attempt to restructure Congo's debt. Under the terms of the restructuring, BCCI, which was the second largest of all lenders to the Congo, would be forced to accept losses on its lending, which it did not wish to do. Accordingly, BCCI officials discussed what kind of payments could be made to the ministry of finance in the Congo to solve the problem:
Dildar Rizve [a senior BCCI official] said, if I can get to him, if he releases our funds, I’ll set up a scholarship for him. I have a feeling it was $100,000 for his children. But in 1987 the finance minister was replaced and a new finance minister came in who was a younger and more honest man. The new chap wanted $5 million as a temporary overdraft to assist the President for his tribe. If we could get him that, they would pay us back within 5-10 days. I spoke to Naqvi [then BCCI’s second highest ranking official] who said, go and do it. It was repaid and he was honest. He said, if you want money, lend me another $20 million. Congo had changed from socialism to joining the World Bank and becoming capitalist. He said I will see that your outstanding [loan]s are paid before we join the World Bank. The money was given. On June 29 1988, the new finance minister was in Paris and Security Pacific [which was lending the Congo new funds] paid us the full amount outstanding.(60)
BCCI was one of only two out of 32 banks that was fully repaid on its lending. While the new finance minister was, in Chinoy's view, honest, to keep him that way, BCCI did make sure that he and the Governor of the Central Bank received presents from BCCI. According to Chinoy, "we gave him the expensive presents and that made the difference."(61)
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