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

Two journalists with Time magazine didn’t just report on the BCCI story: they became players in a game of journalistic three-dimensional chess—full of murky leads and shady sources who often were not what they seemed. Through their fast-paced, firsthand account, we are there as Beaty and Gwynne arrange back-channel rendezvous: find a way around government stonewalling; and slowly begin to trace the web of kickbacks, corruption, and cover-ups that spanned three U.S. administrations and ensnared politicians and business figures around the world. The Outlaw Bank shows how the BCCI was more than a bank with a portfolio of bad loans and nasty clients like Manuel Noriega and the Medellin cartel. With offices and agents in every corner of the world, the BCCI had become a clearinghouse for almost anything: political bribes, untraceable cash, guns, tanks—even nuclear weapons. Beaty and Gwynne tell the real BCCI story with all of its amazing detail and mysterious characters. They go inside the mind of Agha Hasan Abedi, BCCI's messianic founder, whose vision of a Third World bank became twisted into a financial evil empire that moved effortlessly across national borders. They show how Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and others mounted a massive inquiry—in the face of opposition from the U. S. Justice Department—that eventually led to the indictment of both the bank and former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford. They reveal how they unraveled the BCCI's labyrinth of connections in Africa, Europe, and the United States, and with the CIA—and how their investigation broke through the Washington cover-up that had protected the BCCI for so long. The authors explain why top White House figures in the last two administrations knew about the BCCI's criminal activities yet remained silent as the bank built an empire to service drug dealers. The Outlaw Bank is also the first book to go inside the BCCI's “Black Network,” a shadowy organization that handled the bank’s most sensitive transactions, including arms sales to Iraq, Syria, and other bellicose nations; stolen military secrets; drug deals; and even terrorism. Beaty and Gwynne show dramatically how the BCCI used the Black Network to export its special brand of corruption to the most powerful circles in countries around the world. Brilliantly detailed and wonderfully readable, The Outlaw Bank is the most authoritative account of one of the largest and most disturbing criminal conspiracies in history. It is also a detective story crammed with spies, mercenaries, and crooked bankers. BCCI owned a gigantic transportion company. "We moved gold, we moved guns, we moved drugs. This shipment started in Colombia." "...we had to use a crane instead of the forklifts." Their planes did not go through customs, this one had a U.S. destination. The "Justice" Department never prosecuted and Mueller lied about it. One of the many tools of hidden hand politics. JONATHAN BEATY is an award-winning investigative reporter and a senior correspondent for Time magazine. He lives in California. S. C. GWYNNE is Time's economics editor and the author of Selling Money. Their reporting on the BCCI scandal won them the Gerald Loeb and John Hancock awards for business reporting and the Jack Anderson Award for investigative reporting.