Work in Progress
Agha Hasan Abedi’s ambitions for BCCI extended well beyond the markets in which the Bank had already established a substantial international presence. Accounts by former BCCI executives, contemporary books and BCCI’s own publications and in-house magazines indicate that Abedi spoke of building one of the world’s largest banking institutions and regarded a major presence in the United States as an important part of that vision. One former senior BCCI executive later recalled that Abedi’s ambition was ultimately to build the biggest bank in the world.
The United States was particularly important to that ambition. Published accounts describe Abedi as wanting BCCI to establish a significant position in the world’s largest financial market. Direct expansion by a foreign banking group, however, faced significant regulatory and political obstacles. BCCI’s interests in American banking institutions therefore became an important part of its longer-term US strategy.
This section will examine whether Abedi’s wider ambition ultimately included relocating BCCI’s principal centre to the United States and developing a banking group with assets approaching US$50 billion, as recalled in BCCI publications and accounts by former executives. These references will be examined alongside contemporary BCCI magazines, internal material, published books and subsequent official investigations.
It will also examine the methods through which BCCI sought to establish a stronger position within American banking, including its relationships with influential political figures, its associations with individuals connected with the CIA and other US institutions, and its indirect interests in American banks, particularly First American Bankshares. The subsequent US Senate investigation concluded that BCCI had secretly acquired control of First American and also found that the CIA had used BCCI and First American for certain operational purposes.
These relationships later became central to investigations by the Federal Reserve, Congress, the Department of Justice and other US authorities.
A wider historical question therefore arises:
Did Abedi’s determination to establish BCCI-with its Arab shareholders, developing-world associations and distinctive international identity-as a significant force within American banking ultimately expose the Bank to political, regulatory and institutional opposition that it might otherwise have avoided?
A related question concerns the manner in which BCCI sought to establish that presence. Rather than remaining simply a foreign bank operating at the margins of the US financial system, BCCI developed indirect interests in institutions that possessed an established American identity.
Did this attempt to gain a significant position within the US banking system through institutions outwardly possessing an American character arouse particular regulatory and political suspicion, especially where more direct foreign ownership or control might otherwise have encountered resistance?
BCCI’s relationships with influential political figures, its indirect interests in American banks and its associations with individuals connected with US intelligence subsequently attracted intense regulatory, congressional and political scrutiny. These relationships may have become particularly sensitive once concerns arose that BCCI was seeking not merely to conduct business in the United States as a foreign institution, but to establish a deeper and potentially influential position within the American banking system itself.
Some observers have suggested that BCCI’s difficulties in the United States became substantially more serious once its indirect American banking interests and its political and intelligence connections came under investigation. This does not establish that US authorities acted improperly or that BCCI would otherwise have escaped legitimate regulatory scrutiny.
It does, however, justify closer examination of whether Abedi’s pursuit of his “US dream” changed the way BCCI was perceived-from an international bank headquartered outside the United States into an institution seeking entry into sensitive areas of the American banking, political and financial establishment.
The issue is therefore broader than whether BCCI complied fully with US banking regulations. It concerns whether the scale of Abedi’s ambition, the methods employed to establish an American presence, the Bank’s unusual international ownership and developing-world identity, and its political and intelligence connections combined to create a level of institutional resistance that a more conventional foreign-bank presence might not have encountered.
The section will therefore examine Abedi’s ambitions for BCCI in the United States; First American and other US banking interests; relationships with American political figures; the CIA connection; regulatory resistance; congressional investigations; restrictions affecting foreign banking expansion; and whether BCCI’s American ambitions contributed materially to the increasingly hostile political and regulatory environment it encountered in the United States.
The purpose is not to assume that Abedi’s US ambitions caused BCCI’s subsequent difficulties. It is to examine whether the pursuit of those ambitions placed BCCI in direct contact with powerful political, regulatory and financial interests and thereby became an important factor in understanding the Bank’s increasingly difficult relationship with the United States.
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