BCCI and the English Court

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BCCI and the English Court

Postby antiaristo » Wed Apr 12, 2006 3:32 pm

I'm going to bump this once.<br>If nobody is interested I'll let it die.<br><br>Let me remind you about BCCI<br><br>Remember Iran-Contra? BCCI was the bank supplying financial services.<br><br>Remember Dr AQ Khan and his nuclear proliferation throughout the 1980s? BCCI was the joint venture partner in the project.<br><br>If you read the Bowers piece below you can see that from 1979 onwards the Bank of England knew that it should bring BCCI into its ambit.<br><br>But it never happened. BCCI was NEVER regulated.<br><br>Because SOMEBODY was preventing the Bank from doing its job.<br>From 1979 to 1991.<br><br>Remember Valerie Plame/Wilson and Brewster Jennings?<br>SOMEBODY tried to stop them from doing their job. But they pushed back, and disrupted the effort to plant WMD evidence in Iraq.<br>They were destroyed.<br><br>As I write this the cognoscenti are actively discussing the possibility that America "Nuke Iran"<br><br>Because Iran is pursuing nuclear competences it is perfectly entitled to have.<br><br>Remember how Saddam Hussein was set up, through April Glasbie?<br><br>There are enough clues hanging around here for the average citizen-sleuth to work out what is going on. And more important, who is behind it all.<br><br>When BCCI finally got to court it was thrown out FOR NO REASON.<br><br>That is the way the protection racket works.<br><br>End of edit<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>5pm <br><br>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br><!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="font-size:medium;">Judge calls BCCI case a farce</span><!--EZCODE FONT END--> <br><br>Staff and agencies<br>Wednesday April 12, 2006 <br><br><br>The presiding judge in the failed lawsuit brought against the Bank of England by the liquidators of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) today described the case as a "farce".<br><br>In a hearing on the legal costs of the marathon case, Mr Justice Tomlinson revealed he had felt misgivings after the many weeks of opening submissions.<br><br>"I became so concerned about the case that I decided both to consult and to warn the Lord Chief Justice about it. I told the Lord Chief Justice, then Lord Woolf, that the case was a farce," he said.<br><br>The judge told Lord Woolf that <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>the case "had the capacity to damage the reputation of our legal system</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->". They discussed whether they could do anything "to persuade the liquidators of the folly of their enterprise".<br><br>Mr Justice Tomlinson said they decided they could do little, adding that the Deloitte legal team, led by Gordon Pollock, was "of the greatest eminence".<br><br>Deloitte dropped the £850m lawsuit, which was the first case ever brought against the central bank, in November. It had gone through two years in court and 12 years of litigation. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>The liquidators withdrew their claim after a ruling by the chancellor of the high court, Sir Andrew Morritt, that it was no longer in the best interests of creditors to go on.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>The Bank of England is seeking about £80m in costs from the liquidators, but a ruling on that will be made at a later date. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Mr Justice Tomlinson today said he would offer guidance in support of the claims for costs to be awarded on an indemnity basis - the highest scale of costs and often seen as punitive.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>"It is difficult to think of a case in which the entitlement to indemnity costs could more clearly be made out," he said.<br><br>Lawyers for Deloitte had alleged that the Bank knowingly failed to protect depositors from the world's biggest bank fraud, which resulted in the collapse of BCCI owing more than $16bn (£9.1bn). <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>The Bank is legally protected from negligence claims, so Deloitte pursued the claim that its officials were guilty of "misfeasance" - acting dishonestly or in bad faith.<br><br>By the time the case collapsed, 42 Bank officials were accused of dishonesty, with allegations that some had misled parliament.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>Mr Justice Tomlinson said some of the claims were "simply bizarre" and that the structure they were based upon was "built on occasion not even on sand, but rather on air".<br><br>He also criticised Deloitte for courting publicity in respect of the claim, which he described as "a cynical and grotesque operation" designed to put pressure on the Bank to capitulate.<br><br>BCCI was founded in 1972 by a Pakistani banker, Agha Hassan Abedi, and grew to span 69 countries with $20bn in assets. Regulators closed it after they discovered it had disguised losses and was insolvent.<br><br>Its collapse left more than 6,500 depositors trying to get their money back. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>The Bank of England granted BCCI a licence to operate in the City in 1980 but did not take over supervision of it, because although it had a London headquarters it was registered in Luxembourg</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->.<br><br>The case at London's Royal Courts of Justice made English legal history for the two longest opening speeches and became so complex that the two sides were separated by a stack of files five feet high, dubbed the Berlin Wall.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Mr Justice Tomlinson stressed that his comments did not mean he had concluded that the Bank was beyond criticism over the discharge of its duties in permitting BCCI to carry on business in the UK</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/bcci/story/0,,1752498,00.html?gusrc=ticker-103704">www.guardian.co.uk/bcci/s...ker-103704</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Why should ANY case have the potential to damage the legal system?<br>UNLESS the legal system is crooked, and would be exposed.<br><br>Why was it in the creditors best interests?<br>Surely it was in the interests of the Bank of England.<br>Which is the reason for the final paragraph. What does the word "criticism" mean in the context of legal action?<br><br>This is the strength of the case against the Bank of England.<br><br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>BCCI returns to haunt Bank of England <br><br>A court case looking at events in the 1980s could set a precedent for suing regulators <br><br>Simon Bowers<br>Saturday January 3, 2004<br>The Guardian <br><br><br>It was on the eve of the first creditors' meeting following the dramatic collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, with hundreds of furious and confused depositors expected to fill Wembley Arena baying for compensation, that the liquidators announced they had served writs against just about everyone connected with BCCI - including the Bank of England. <br>No one has successfully sued the Bank, which as the former regulator enjoys immunity against all claims save those alleging dishonesty. The liquidators were claiming the Bank of England had not only made a series of breath-taking errors and omissions in its supervision of BCCI, it had done so knowing full well that depositors' life savings might be in peril. <br><br>BCCI was finally shut down in 1991, amid a welter of fraud and corruption charges, with outstanding debts of $10bn. <br>To some, demands for £850m (in today's money) in compensation from the Bank may have looked like panicky sabre-rattling on the part of liquidators at Touche Ross, now Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. Eleven years on, the claim is nevertheless being doggedly pursued, with the scene set for a marathon legal battle that is expected to occupy the same courtroom as the Hutton inquiry for about a year. <br><br>In two weeks' time, Gordon Pollock QC, counsel for the liquidators, will take to his feet in the high court and open the first of the 125 lever-arch files containing the hearing's core documents. His initial address is expected to take up to three months, during which time he will level countless accusations of malicious recklessness against 22 of those Bank officials who oversaw the supervision of BCCI. <br><br>Among the witnesses the Bank is expected to call in its defence will be former governors Sir Eddie George, Lord Kingsdown (formerly Robin Leigh-Pemberton) and Lord (Gordon) Richardson. <br><br>Other prominent names to take the stand include Brian Quinn, chairman of Celtic football club, and Peter Cooke, who headed the Bank's supervision department for much of the 1980s. Several other central players have died in the time it has taken for the case to be heard. <br><br>The central allegation facing the Bank is that it deliberately perpetuated the charade of BCCI as an overseas bank, allowing it to operate outside Bank of England full regulatory control throughout the 1980s. <br><br>The claim is among a series of allegations that go far beyond conclusions drawn by Lord Bingham's 1992 official report into BCCI's demise. <br><br>Lord Bingham, now Britain's most senior law lord, concluded that over-worked Bank of England regulators had made an innocent mistake when they designated BCCI a Luxembourg bank in 1980. <br><br>They had done so despite the fact that it was no secret that BCCI's Luxembourg holding company was a little more than a brass plate, with most meaningful operations run out of offices at 100 Leadenhall Street in the City - a stone's throw from the Bank of England. <br><br>Lord Bingham said: "In applying this new and unfamiliar statutory regime [the 1979 Banking Act], it was necessary for the Bank, first of all, to understand what was meant by 'principal place of business'. That was a legal question. <br><br>"Those who handled this matter in the Bank had many applications to process in a very limited time, and did not recognise this as a question to be asked. So no legal advice was sought ... The question was simply never addressed." <br><br>Mr Pollock will challenge this conclusion, pointing to internal Bank papers, seen by the Guardian, which appear to show senior banking supervision officials and lawyers had indeed, from the outset, raised the question of whether BCCI should be more appropriately classified as a British bank. <br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>As early as February 1979</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> Frank Hall, a senior lawyer at the Bank, wrote an internal memo to colleagues concerning the imminent Banking Act. In it he said: "I should be grateful if you could let me know whether ... there are any companies which are not registered in the UK but which have their principal place of business or place of central management or control here ... but which we should not want to recognise." <br><br>Copies of the memo, which was circulated among senior department officials, show several hand-written annotations. "I can't think of any, can you?" says one, to which another official replies: "No." <br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>"But for this - BCCI?" appears in the sidelines, written in the hand of Peter Cooke, the head of banking supervision.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> <br><br>Mr Pollock will argue this critical exchange fits into a catalogue of alarming internal reports on BCCI, each of which ended in the Bank wringing its hands behind closed doors but ultimately shirking its regulatory responsibilities. <br><br>He is likely to stop short of direct criticism of Lord Bingham, but his remarks may, at the very least, call into question the fullness of information supplied by the Bank to the Bingham inquiry. <br><br>A string of other internal memos make clear the Bank's state of panic. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>In 1982 BCCI was described as "on its way to becoming the financial equivalent of the SS Titanic!".</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> <br><br>Another paper from the same year insists BCCI's status as a Luxembourg bank "<!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>has always been something of a fiction</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> ... I believe it would be wrong for us to continue to allow a large international banking group to carry on business on a largely unsupervised basis". <br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>The following year yet another Bank analyst wrote a report on BCCI entitled "Why action is now urgently required". It suggested the Bank was left with "two basic choices": to close BCCI down or to insist it be redesignated a UK bank, under full Bank of England supervision.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> <br><br>Later memos, Mr Pollock may suggest, show shades of cowardice behind the Bank's intransigence. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>"It is hard to see how we can to other than turn a blind eye ... since we have accepted [BCCI] up to now,"</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> wrote one Bank official as the charade of BCCI's Luxembourg status wore increasingly thin. <br><br>Mr Cooke himself even described the late BCCI chairman Agha Abedi as "the living personification of Uriah Heep". <br><br>In its defence, the Bank is expected to claim that such remarks, when read in context, do not amount to a call for BCCI to be shut down. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>It will accept that grave mistakes were made, but will insist there was no dishonesty involved</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->. <br><br>The Bank is likely to concede there had been internal exchanges over whether to designate BCCI a British or an overseas bank, but will characterise such discussions as fleeting and academic, with little or no bearing on the final - albeit mistaken - decision to declare BCCI a Luxembourg bank. <br><br>If the high-profile case is <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>likely to be damaging for the Bank of England's reputation,</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> despite being stripped of its role as banking regulator since 1997, it may also prove awkward for Gordon Brown. As shadow chancellor following the collapse of BCCI, he was savage in his criticism of the Bank. <br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>"The Bank of England's so-called 'light hand' has made it a soft touch for a crooked bank," he told the Commons in 1992. "Are we not paying a heavy price for the free-for-all of the 1980s which denied regulation its proper place in the management of our financial institutions?" He went on to ask if the then Conservative government had sought the resignation of the Bank's governor, Sir Eddie.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> <br><br>Since his move to the Treasury, however, the chancellor's indignation may well have cooled. Not least because of legal concerns over what precedent any payout by a state regulator might set. It is thought the BCCI case will be closely watched, for example, by <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Equitable Life policyholders</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->, who may be considering building a similar case against the Financial Services Authority. <br><br>Deloitte has so far recouped 75% of depositors' losses, having won settlements from the likes of Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the sheikh and government of Abu Dhabi, one of the United Arab Emirates. The liquidators are believed to have told the 6,500 BCCI creditors it represents in Britain that a win against the Bank could bring the recoup figure up to 87% or 88%, while costs involved in a loss would shave less than a percentage point off the existing 75%.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1115267,00.html">business.guardian.co.uk/s...67,00.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><br>Get thepicture yet?<br>It's a protection racket.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Equitable Life policyholders</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->have indeed been watching.<br>EMAG has secured an investigation by the European Parliament - very much a first.<br><br>We'll see if anything comes of it.<br><br><br><br><br><br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=antiaristo>antiaristo</A> at: 4/12/06 7:18 pm<br></i>
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There are those who know, and those who dont want to know.

Postby slimmouse » Wed Apr 12, 2006 9:23 pm

There are those who know, and those who dont want to know.<br><br> Is that not a famous saying from somewhere ?<br><br> They did of course miss a category out.<br><br> There are those who know, who dont want you to know <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smile.gif ALT=":)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <br><br><br> To my mind, it is they who are the naughty ones. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: There are those who know, and those who dont want to kno

Postby antiaristo » Wed Apr 12, 2006 9:31 pm

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>To my mind, it is they who are the naughty ones.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <br><br>slim,<br>We've had <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>The Invisibles</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END-->.<br><br>How about <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>The Implausibles</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END-->? <p></p><i></i>
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Re: BCCI and the English Court

Postby desertfae » Wed Feb 06, 2008 8:49 pm

antiaristo wrote:Let me remind you about BCCI
Remember Iran-Contra? BCCI was the bank supplying financial services.


I know this is an old thread, but I just joined because I saw a link on my stats from my site where someone was talking about me so I joined :)

I know that BCCI had a TON of connections to my dads, Freds, and Patty's murder. I haven't spoke about this on my site just yet because I'm exposing the entire mess that people call "the octopus" and can only focus on a few things at a time.
I will get into BCCI though soon.
Here's just a taste of the connection:

From Wikipedia on Adnan Khashoggi:
Adnan Khashoggi (or Kashoggi) (Arabic:عدنان خاشقجي, Turkish: Adnan Kaşıkçı) (born 25 July 1935 in Mecca) is a billionaire Saudi arms-dealer and businessman. He is also noted for his engagements with high society in both the Occidental and Arabic-speaking worlds, and for his involvement in the Iran-Contra, BCCI and numerous other affairs.

and here's a document I obtained in my investigation on my dad's murder:

Image

Rachel aka desertfae
desertfae- exposing the octopus
http://www.desertfae.com
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