Bank of Credit and Commerce International

ON JULY 5, 1991, the Bank of England and Luxembourg and Cayman Islands authorities froze the deposits of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) and closed its branches. BCCI had offices in 70 countries and 14,000 employees. More important, the bank had a negative value of £7 billion and estimated losses of £12 billion. Founded in 1972 by the Pakistani banker Agha Hasan Abedi, BCCI had been mired in scandal since a U.S. federal grand jury in Tampa, Florida, on October 4, 1988, indicted the bank and 10 bank executives for laundering drug money. Pundits began to call BCCI the Bank of Cocaine and Criminals International.

The investigations leading to the court case prompted the Bank of England and other interested national banking authorities ...