Reply #21: More info on BCCI here.... [View All]

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While the Senate brought up questions of impropriety by BCCI, the Senators avoided some of the most sensitive questions raised about CIA involvement in the bank. Author Alfred McCoy discussed one of those unanswered questions with the Shadow, the expansion of the heroin trade from Southeast Asia to the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

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The size of the heroin shipments from Afghanistan grew with the involvement of the Pakistan military. By the time of the 1988 plane crash that killed Pakistani dictator Zia ul-Haq, heroin trafficking was widespread among the ranks of officers in the Pakistan military. Heroin trafficking from Pakistan soon outstripped shipments from Southeast Asia and by 1991 more than 60% of the heroin sold on the streets of New York City originated in Afghanistan.
Alfred McCoy speculates that if a congressional investigation would ask tough questions about BCCI, it would uncover drug trafficking and money laundering by United States allies protected from prosecution by the CIA. McCoy told the Shadow, "I think what we'll possibly discover is that the CIA was shipping its funds into Pakistan through BCCI, protecting BCCI thereby from serious investigations elsewhere in the world. That the Pakistan military were in fact banking their drug profits, moving their drug profits from the consuming country back to Pakistan though BCCI.

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In fact the boom in the Pakistan drug trade was financed by BCCI. The interrelationship between the Afghan resistance and the CIA and the Pakistan drug trade can all be seen through the medium of BCCI, the banker to both operations, the resistance and the drug trade."

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The reason that the regulators and the Congressional hearings don't seem to want to touch upon it is that, very possibly and probably, BCCI had direct ties to the Justice Department and to the regulators who were supposed to be watching the store. In fact, the reason that BCCI was not investigated and not prosecuted a lot earlier for its activities was because it was providing necessary services -- a full service bank.