A Full Service Bank

Known to some as the "Bank of Crooks and Criminals", BCCI was the favourite clearing house of dictators, drug traffickers and arms merchants. Its policies - no questions asked, no accounts refused - fitted the far-reaching, secret aims of the likes of the CIA, Panama's Manual Noriega and the most feared and lethal anti-Western terrorist, Abu Nidal. On 5 July 1991, BCCI branches were simultaneously shut down in the UK, US and five other countries, and it was revealed that the bank "was a corrupt criminal organization throughout its entire 19-year history". In this account, two investigative journalists expose a scandal that affected not only the criminal depositors but ruined the lives of thousands of workers and small businesses who had trusted the "family" bank with their savings.