Witnesses called in BCCI case

[emad]

June 13, 2005
Times
Witnesses called in BCCI case
By Jon Ashworth



AFTER 18 months of opening legal statements, the landmark High Court case involving the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) will today hear from its first witness.

Brian Quinn, former head of banking supervision at the Bank of England, and current chairman of Celtic Football Club, is expected to be in the witness box for three months.

The liquidators of BCCI are suing the Bank for £850 million in damages, accusing it of failing in its supervisory duties. BCCI was shut down in 1991 with debts of £9 billion.

Mr Quinn and Peter Cooke, another former head of banking supervision, are the only two witnesses in the case confirmed so far. Their evidence will drag on into early next year.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,170-1651844,00.html


BRIAN QUINN

[emad]

1. London Evening Standard: Quinn faces severe criticism

Bank boss to take stand in £1bn case
James Rossiter, Evening Standard,
13 June 2005

SNIP:

Quinn is expected to face severe criticism over his role from 1982 as assistant director of banking supervision and as that division's head from 1986 to 1988.
--------------
Evidence already submitted to the court includes annotations in February 1987 on a note by a former deputy head of Quinn's team to the then Bank Governor Lord Kingsdown (Robin Leigh-Pemberton) in which he stated: 'I am convinced that it would be v. dangerous for us to accept this as a UK bank.'

The liquidators claim the Bank acted unlawfully, improperly or dishonestly in regulating BCCI and was 'knowingly reckless' in endangering depositors' money.

http://www.thisislondon.com/news/business/articles/timid401297?source=This%20is%20Money

[emad]

2. BCCI executive officers signed legal papers so that the bank

could obtain Full Banking Licence status from the Bank of England in order to permit trading. Quinn was a signatory to the formalities.

All the statutory legal requirements of submitting audited accounts and compliance with UK banking regulations rested ultimately with BCCI general management. But executive staff in the Bank of England had overall supervisory roles to ensure the law was adhered to.

[seemslikeadream]

7. Catch 'em if ya can

[emad]

8. Shitfting sands or is that quickmud?

Thanks for the pictorial Seems!
x

[emad]

9. OFFICIAL DOWNING STREET MEMO:

Aw shucks, investigatin' this sort of stuff would mean Poodle might NEVER pick up that Congressional Medal of Honor................

[seemslikeadream]

10. District Attorney Robert Morgenthau

Manhattan's veteran District Attorney Robert Morgenthau is on the verge of penetrating a major conduit for foreign money into the Bush family network and the American political system that parallels the campaign finance scandals in Ohio and Florida. Morgenthau's investigation of the notorious Sam and Charlie Wyly brothers of Texas, the billionaires who spearheaded the Swift Boat disinformation campaign against John Kerry and a similar distortion effort against John McCain in 2000, is focused on a Wyly-controlled Isle of Man off-shore account tied to the Bank of America. In 1989, George H. W. Bush dispatched a Houston attorney to the Isle of Man to take charge of the secret Bush accounts. One of the accounts was Five Star Trust, a multi-billion dollar account used by the Bushes as a covert off-shore money tranche for their political and business purposes.

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/scoops/Lemme.htm


http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/120104Madsen/120104madsen.html

Wayne Madsen sent me an email about his fraud article..here's what he says
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=84862
Madsen: Curtis, Feeney, Khashoggi link, $29.6 mil check, former CIA!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=297594
Activisms-Jeff Fisher-CyberNET scam revealed
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=114438
4th Madsen Article:White House-linked operation paid for "vote switching"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=117320
Madsen, Five Star Trust, World War II loot
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=109143
ALERT: Madsen story strong/incomplete, WE HAVE AFFIDAVIT
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=117988
Transcript of Wayne Madsen interview 12/05 on Sunday Monitor
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=116796
Madsen says new article forthcoming re: tieing it together and decoys
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=104937
CyberNET Group CEO killed during standoff - continued discussion please
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=76758
Greg Palast Investigation called in gets widespread
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=114232
Madsen asks for our help into Five Star and "Mr. Horn" (more information)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=107312
Madsen's third article!!!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=96274
WAYNE MADSEN Q&A DU 11/28 PM ------------A COMPILATION
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=88322
I'm having no trouble believing Madsen
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=88869
Wayne Madsen sent me an email about his fraud article..here's what he says
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=84862
Keith is on and he's going to be talking about the new..
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=90282
Olbermann blogs about Madsen info
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=82722
***Election 2004: 73 SCHOOLS LOCKEDDOWN IN PALM BEACH ***
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=80870
Saudis, Enron money helped pay for US rigged election
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=84802
Olbermann & Madsen are talking -- KO may change his tune.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=84636
Wayne Madsen will be on radio Today! Listen online.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=86231
Madsen Updates Report
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=81645
e-mail reply from Mr. Wayne Madsen
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=79932
Port Vila Presse KICKS BUSH BUTT ON MADSEN STORY
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=83560

[emad]

14. Holy shit! Go Morgenthau! - his work on closing down BCCI in USA

deserves a Congressional Medal of Honor in itself.

THANKS very much for posting all the above links Seems. Might take a while to read up on all this but it sure looks worth it.

[AnneD]

27. Thanks....

for the sites. I have been following this story on and off for 5 yrs after I accidently stumbled on to it (way before I joined DU). The level of corruption has never ceased to amaze me.

[AuntiBush]

13. You're picts always crack me up!

Luv um!

[annabanana]

26. and the jutes are pretty funny too...

[emad]

3. Row over BCCI witness numbers: The Guardian

Row over BCCI witness numbers

Simon Bowers
Monday June 13, 2005
The Guardian

SNIP:

Mr Quinn will be followed by Roger Barnes, 73, who was also a senior banking supervision official at the Bank. His witness statement runs to only 328 pages, though he is expected to be in the witness box for about the same length of time as Mr Quinn.

Lawyers for BCCI liquidators Deloitte & Touche are furious at the Bank's revised approach on witnesses and will seek an order from the judge instructing the Bank to produce further witnesses.

Among those the liquidators want to hear evidence from are a number of middle ranking banking analysts who produced several internal whistleblowing reports on BCCI shortly after it was granted a banking licence in Britain.

Stuart Lynas, for example, told supervision bosses in 1983 that the Bank's decision to allow BCCI to operate in Britain but to be regulated in Luxembourg breached the Banking Act. Another analyst had described BCCI as being "on its way to becoming the financial equivalent of the SS Titanic".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1504995,00.html

[AuntiBush]

4. I hope justice wins out, but these days... Justice is Blind, sadly.

[emad]

5. Former UK BCCI general manager JOHN HILBERRY turned states

evidence to the City of London cops about everything he knew re BCCI criminality. His lengthy plea bargain was in response to polce investigations into the 1983 Brinks Matt bullion heist in Heathrow Airport and the July 1986 'disappearance' of UK estate agent Suzie Lamplugh - a murder case officially unsolved.

Hilberry was then gunned down and killed. The UK cops played the story down after numerous press reports that he had been given a new ID and had gone to live abroad as part of his plea bargain.

One major line of investigation was that Hilberry alleged Brian Quinn, the Bank of England supervision team executive officer, was commercially involved with members of Robert Maxwell's family who were spying for North Korea.

[AuntiBush]

11. For the sake of "Suzie Lamplugh's" memory, I hope justice prevails.

Sounds like they have plenty of evidence. Know how it feels to wait so long for justice. Maybe England will do better justice-wise, then here in the States.

Death of America Democracy: D. Nov. 2000 - Re-death: Nov. 2004.

[emad]

17. Lamplugh: she was a 'plant' . Real name Maria Gelli, a great-niece

of Licio Gelli, one of the P2 Lodge members curetly in the slammer awaiting the Rome murder trial of God's Banker Roberto Calvi which resumes this October.

Lamplugh was the cover name given to her by MI5 for whom she worked as a very junior field officer. Her political master was ex-Tory MP Jonathan Aitken - who subsequently was sentenced to 18 months in the slammer for perjury following the aftermath of his criminal involvement in Thatcher's disastrous Al-Yammamah oil scam.

Lamplugh's job was part of Margaret Thatcher's dirty tricks campaign using bent spooks and cops to infiltrate so called Provisional IRA cells in the UK and conduct terror campaigns in their name, aimed at assasinating all her political, financial, military and intelligence detractors who were knew about her disastrous abortive attempt at a UK military coup in 1980 which Bush Sr masterminded on Ronnie Raygun's behalf.

Lamplugh's cover was that of an estate agent. She was involved in a massive UK property fraud that Robert Maxwell was running on Bush Sr's behalf. Trying to steal for the second time a porperty portfolio that had been involved in the downfall of Banco Ambrosiano.

This scam involved false property documentation - leases and freehold deeds - and massive bank loans raised on them as collateral.

Initially the property portfolio had been stolen in the 1970s by incompetent KGB agents in the UK who were under the direct control of George Bush Senior. Notably one Emilia Gelli and her illegitimate paedophile son Peter Freeman.

This was attested to in evidence in the UK's Royal Courts of Justice in a 1970 child abuse lawsuit involving the P2 Lodge as well as Prince Stanislaw Radziwill - ex-husband of Caroline Lee Bouvier Canfield Radziwill - Black Jack Bouvier's younger daughter. Freeman was one of several who were handed lengthy custodial sentences for the rape and attempted murder of a nine year old female member of the UK royal family.

The property portfolio had been laundered via the Midland Bank (now HSBC) on behalf of the Marian Fathers, a Polish Catholic order connected to the P2 Lodge. It then found its way into the hands of Cardinal Marcinkus, CEO of the Vatican Bank after Roberto Calvi got his hands on it and raised loans on it in his Banco Ambrosiano.

Ambrosiano fell because the cops busted the bank and returned the protfolio back to its legal owners in the UK.

Lamplugh was involved in a scam to recover the individual London properties belonging to this portfolio and the erasing of all connections to George Bush Sr's involvement with KGB operatives in the 1970 child sex abuse trial. In particular to the main incriminating evidence against him that he had hired Peter Freeman to murder the nine year old girl who he had raped and left for dead......

NINETEEN years on, Peter Freeman has re-invented himself as a top UK politician. This was with Margaret Thatcher's personal help in eradicating criminal records and security/intelligence files showing is pedophile past.

NINETEEN years on after her 'disappearance', the UK cops are still keeping a stony silence on the matter. BUT they did go absoultely ballistic when in May 1992 the Times printed a short item outlining what I have posted above.

The Times story also mentioned that Lamplugh was the unfortunate victim of an ID blunder. That 'Freeman' was attempting to shoot the woman whom he had raped and tried to kill when she was 9 years old and that he mistook Lamplugh for her.

The involvement of members of the Gelli family in London is believed to be paramount and may evetually provide the evidence of what happened to her body. Many of them still live and work under false ID covers that Thatcher provided for them in the 1980s. One particular branch which is connected directly my marriage to relatives of Vladimir Putin's wife Lyudmilla and cousins of Boris Yeltsin has been involved in an extensive coverup of a child sex abuse and murder scandal. Another - Henry Gelli - is the central lynchpin between former bent MI6 spooks and military intelligence renegades and what is euphemistically referred to as Al-Qaeda, via corrupt financial scams committed by Mohammed Fayed, so-called owner of Harrods.......

It is also pertinent to mention that another scion of the family, John Gelli, was listed along with ex-CIA spook Richard McGarrach Helms, James R Bath and Robert Maxwell as director/sharholder of the International Credit and Investment Corporation (ICIC), the Carribean-based parent company of BCCI Holdings, owner of BCCI.

[emad]

6. BCCI TIMELINE from the BBC

BCCI TIMELINE
1972: Luxembourg-based BCCI opens branch in London
1985: Price Waterhouse investigates BCCI losses
1987 Luxembourg asks for help to regulate BCCI
1988: Tampa branch of BCCI closed after money-laundering charges
1990: Price Waterhouse says BCCI needs £1.8bn rescue
1991: BCCI closed down by international regulators
1992: Bingham report criticises Bank of England's role
1993: Liquidators issue writ against Bank of England
1997: Labour moves banking supervision to FSA
2004: Court case begins
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4085720.stm

[AuntiBush]

12. Price Waterhouse... Int'l Regulators... Thanks for the BBC link.

This is interesting. Thank you so much for posting this. Hope other's take heed here, but we're being pounded with so much crap it's hard to maintain entire mass corruption.

Great posts! Read them every week, btw.
:thumbsup:

[dryan]

15. I thought this case...

was settled years ago. Really tragic that so many great Dems got involved

[dryan]

16. Whatever became of Robert Altman...

he was tried and found not guilty, married to Lynda Carter.

[emad]

18. That was BCCI America. Morgenthau closed them down after the

first domino fell in the UK when BCCI London general Manager turned states evidence after being questioned aout organised crime. See post #5.

[hang a left]

19. Is there a book out there anywhere that

can bring someone up to speed on the whole BCCI scandal. Also would be interested in a book about Banco Ambrosia. I just bought In God's Name by David Yallop but haven't started it yet.

[emad]

20. The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI

The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI
By Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne
2004/02 - Beard Books
1587981467 - Paperback - Reprint - 428 pp.
US$34.95
The Outlaw Bank was named by Business Week as one of the top nine business books of 1993.


Bailout: An Insider's Account of Bank Failures and Rescues

Here is a detailed and spellbinding account of the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), one of the greatest financial scandals of all time. Events and players spring to life in this sordid story involving the wealthy, heads of state, and governments. The scandal affords a rare and representative glimpse at the trillion-dollar-plus underground market of secret money that moves at will in and out of the world's most sophisticated and highly regulated economies.

From BookNews:

The 1991 collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was one of the biggest financial scandals of all time. Based upon an 18-month-long series of articles in Time magazine, this text describes the international corruption that allowed this criminal enterprise to flourish for two decades with effective immunity from the law. The investigation reveals how governments around the world utilized the bank's services to finance terrorist organizations, hide drug money, and conduct illegal arms sales. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

MORE:
http://www.beardbooks.com/the_outlaw_bank.html
EDIT:
ALSO:
False Profits: The Inside Story of Bcci, the World's Most Corrupt Financial Empire
by Peter Truell, Larry Gurwin
(Truell/Gurwin are credited as the autors but may have ghosted this one)

Dirty Money: Bcci : The Inside Story of the World's Sleaziest Bank by Mark Potts
FULL SERVICE BANK by James Adams
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins
Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion by Gary Webb
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil by Michael C. Ruppert

[gandalf]

21. Yes, there is a book:

Jonathan Beaty und S.C. Gwynne, The Outlaw Bank : A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI, Random House, 1993

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679413847/002-2775394-3723233?v=glance

The report of John F. Kerry (intro)
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/02intro.htm

The report as a pdf:
http://de.geocities.com/heino_x27dd/

[emcguffie]

23. Is that the one about the murder of Pope John Paul first? nt

[emad]

29. In God's Name by David Yallop. Also The Broken Cross by

Piers Compton.

[emad]

22. Bank's costs rise to £100million - Times, 16 June:

June 16, 2005

Bank's costs for BCCI lawsuit set to rise to £100m
By Jon Ashworth



THE cost to the Bank of England of fighting the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) lawsuit is set to hit £100 million by early next year.

The case, which opened at the High Court in January 2004, cost the Bank £19.5 million in legal fees in the year to February 2005, according to the Bank’s newly published annual report. Fees are forecast to rise to £23.5 million in the current financial year, with a further £3.5 million set aside as a contingency against the case overrunning.

---------------

Defending the cost of the action in the annual report, Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, writes: “The action brought against the Bank by the liquidators of BCCI has continued to give us new insights into the legal system. Nothing that has happened over the past year has changed my view . . . that this is a case that should never have been brought, and we remain confident that it will not be successful.”

Mr King adds: “The expenses of defending the case are substantial but we have no doubt that it is right to do so and we will take every opportunity in due course to press for the fullest recovery of our costs.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,173-1655969,00.html


MUST feel pretty confident that the Thatcher/Major/Blair triumvirate has completely witewashed over all those security/intelligence files that have nailed as senior KGB officers who conspired on BCCI just like on Banco Ambrosiano/God's Banker's murder.

[emcguffie]

24. My god, you know so much --

Are you safe?

Personally, I find it very difficult to follow financial scandals. But paedophilia and murder are a bit more direct. Will anybody ever be able to prove this on GHW****?

Through the rabbit hole, I am falling falling falling. . . . :tinfoilhat:

[emad]

28. Bush1: the London General Manager of BCCI John Hilberry

testified in a plea bargain to UK cops re all the named and numbered bank accounts that siphoned off BCCI funds via the Carribean parent company of BCI Holdings.

Also gave extensive intelligence on the financial conduits that directly implicate Bush 1 and 2 and their coterie of bent spooks, double agents and rogue cops.

The first BCCI domino fell i9n the UK because of Hilberry's testimonial.

Officially the City of London cops have kept the file open on his gangland execution.

A touch of the Roberto Calvi's here I think.....

[AnneD]

25. I couldn't believe it when I read the title...

WOW, they are finally going to find the Bush/Saddam connection by trying those at the money laundry site (Iraq/contra scandal).....then I read that this takes place in England----bummer. IMHO this is the biggest white washed scandal in THIS country (it effects politician in both parties though). I hope SH talks about this at some point. I suspect the Bush family would love to see him executed, in the guise of Iraqi justice of course, before the connection can be verified.