Reply #5: This all started with the Mob and the CIA in the early 60's [View All]

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I was looking into some of the history last year -- I don't have all the details at my fingertips any more, but the short version is that after the Mob got kicked out of Cuba by Castro in 1959, they went looking for more receptive places in the Caribbean, both for their casinos and for their banking operations.

The Bahamas were the most receptive location early on -- and that's also where Paul Helliwell set up Castle Bank for the CIA, I think in 1962. The Bahamas eventually got leaned on to clean up their act -- and for a while most of the dirty banking activity was going through Nugan Hand in the 70's and then BCCI in the 80's. But since the fall of BCCI, the Caribbean has become a favored location again, with Antigua and the Cayman Islands being particular hot spots.

A big question is who's primarily behind the operations these days -- or if it's just become a sort of global free-for-all. The CIA and the Mob don't seem to be particularly visible any more -- the World War II generation that was most involved has died off without obvious replacements. Also, the fact that US politicians are so easily bribed these days suggests that US interests are no loner the dominant ones. The Russian oligarchs and the Russian-Israeli Mafia were big in the 90's but not so much any more -- and even when the corrupt Russian-connected banks were active on Antigua in the 90's. Stanford doesn't seem to have been connected with them.

My guess is that we're back to an era of what Bucky Fuller called the "Great Pirates" -- global freebooters without allegiance to any nation or ideology, united only by a belief that it's right and proper to fleece the landlubbers -- and that this is how Stanford can best be understood.