Additional central banks had developed relationships with BCCI, but had their accounts shifted by BCCI from its offices in Miami to the National Bank of Georgia in Atlanta. These included Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Honduras, whose "territory" was given by BCCI to its secretly-held subsidiary in Georgia.(8)
It is not possible from BCCI's records in the U.S. to determine even the neighborhood of the degree to which the other Central Banks were depositing funds in BCCI as a whole. For example, the Central Bank of Peru, which did not deposit any funds in BCCI-Miami and therefore is absent from the above extensive list, placed Central Bank deposits at BCCI-Panama that rose to a level of $270 million dollars in June, 1987 — nearly 30 percent of the total cash reserves of the Government of Peru.
Thus, what is significant, simply, is the large number of central banks and government organizations — twenty in all — who were willing to place what was substantial uninsured deposits with BCCI's Miami branch alone, at a time when BCCI was known to have no lender of last resort behind it, and no one to insure a country's repayment should BCCI default.
An appendix to a September 30, 1988 Price Waterhouse Report to BCCI's Audit Committee shows a substantial number of additional governmental entities from other countries making deposits at BCCI as of that date, as follows:
Organization Location Amount
China Civil Eng &
Construction Corporation UAE $11,414,000
Hong Kong 34,400,000
International Fund for
Agricultural Development Luxembourg 17,200,000
OPEC United Kingdom 60,000,000
Central Bank of Sri Lanka United Kingdom 15,070,000
Bangladesh Bank United Kingdom 25,340,000
Bank Foreign Trade
USSR United Kingdom 10,135,000
State Bank Pakistan United Kingdom 48,960,000
National Bank Hungary United Kingdom 15,000,000
Arab Bank for Natl
Development in Africa United Kingdom 42,569,000
Central Bank Syria United Kingdom 21,855,000
Bank of Zambia France 10,920,000
Bank Milli Afghan United Kingdom 20,000,000
Perhaps especially worthy of note from the above list are the Soviet Union's foreign trade account at BCCI, the account for the State Bank of Hungary, and the account for the Central Bank of Syria. In each case, the Subcommittee knows essentially nothing about the underlying nature of the relationship between BCCI and these governments, other than the fact that British sources have contended that BCCI in the United Kingdom was used by numerous intelligence agencies, including most of the major intelligence agencies of the world.(9)
Continued next page
(7028 VIEWS)