BCCI scam

a bank that took money from more than a million

depositors around the world and became a personal
piggy bank for its Arab and Pakistani owners and its
favored customers. For its best customers, millions of
dollars were advanced, often without documentation
and sometimes in violation of the bank's own lending
limits.

Scheme to Cover Losses, as losses mounted, the bank

apparently hatched a scheme to cover them up by
making interest payments on loans with deposits from
other customers. The idea was to deceive auditors from
detecting the red ink in its loan portfolio. The scheme
also involved offshore funds parked in lightly regulated
 several uncensored copies of the bank's independent
audits were released on Capitol Hill along with copies of
letters between the bank and its accounting firm, Price
Waterhouse. There was also a report prepared by the
bank's own senior officers last year who completed an
internal investigation of the bank.
Using codenames like "Sandstorm" for B.C.C.I. and
"Fork" for its Cayman Islands affiliate, called the
International Credit and Investment Company, Price
Waterhouse sketched out in 45 pages what it termed
"one of the most complex deceptions in banking
history."
 Mr. Abedi tapped his contacts in Pakistan for the
biggest, the Gulf Group, a shipping and trading
conglomerate owned by the Gokal family of Karachi.
The relationship began in 1972 when the company
made substantial deposits in B.C.C.I.
In 1976, according to Price Waterhouse documents, the
Gulf Group began borrowing heavily from B.C.C.I. for
trade financing and shipping loans.