Use of Nominees and Fronts Generally
In the early 1980's, as part of BCCI's program of expansion in Latin America, BCCI decided that it was essential to expand banking operations in the Americas. Accordingly, a team of BCCI's acquisition experts, including Amir Lodhi and Abol Helmy, began meeting with Central Bankers and government officials in such places as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela to find suitable banks to purchase. In most of these countries, there were at the time restrictions on the ability of foreign banks to purchase local banks. Accordingly, Lodhi and Helmy were directed to identify prominent figures in each country who would agree to act as BCCI nominees in purchasing local institutions, under agreements where the nominees would not be at risk, while BCCI would secretly finance their purchases — precisely as it had done in its purchase of First American Bankshares and the National Bank of Georgia in the United States.
While the financial details of each proposed transaction differed, the model for the transactions had been drawn up by BCCI years previously, and had been relied upon by BCCI in its secret purchase of First American. Helmy was provided with draft structures of these previous transactions, which he used as a guide in preparing fresh proposals for these Latin American countries. Ultimately, using this mechanism, BCCI was able to purchase banks in Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia; however, Helmy contended that in the case of Argentina, the laws changed prior to the purchase of the bank, and so the nominee arrangements that had been agreed upon were not needed.(12)
As BCCI's former head of its Latin American and Caribbean operations, Akbar Bilgrami explained:
Using a nominee was a typical way of going about things. Argentina, Brazil, Ghana, Colombia, Venezuela, Nigeria. All these places started out as nominee relationships. Some were cleaned up. But it was always preferable that there not be a nominee relationship. When we bought a bank or set up a subsidiary, we would often use the nominee relationship because the laws of the country wouldn't allow BCC to have majority control. For example, we used it briefly in Colombia until we received permission to have majority control for BCCI from the government.(13)
In each case, various forms of payments for the individuals who facilitated the purchases of the banks were made by BCCI, including bribes to officials in many of the countries.
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