Who got what from the bank of Credit and Commerce International

SUDAN

BCCI's situation in Sudan was similar to its situation in a number of African countries — it assured its access to central bank funds through making payoffs to officials. As Akbar Bilgrami described it, this was a general practice which he personally participated in only once, by his superiors at BCCI London when he was a very junior officer of the bank:

In 1977, I was asked to go with the Senior Official of the Central Bank and given 100,000 pounds. I was told to buy him anything he wanted. I kept the receipts as we were buying items. This made the central bank official very nervous, the keeping of receipts. He said, 'Barclays doesn't keep receipts.' I brought the receipts back to my boss, who said 'What did you do that for?' and threw them away. We spent about 70,000 pounds that day.⁽¹⁴³⁾

Continued next page

(6811 VIEWS)