A Forthcoming Book
BCCI was abruptly closed in July 1991 through coordinated action led by the Bank of England, acting on a draft - not final - report prepared under Section 41 of the Banking Act. At the time of closure, a restructuring backed by the government of Abu Dhabi had already been agreed in principle and was awaiting implementation. Verdict Deferred examines what is actually known about BCCI's financial condition, what was alleged against it, and how much of what has since become received wisdom about the BCCI rests on findings that were never tested to completion.
The book gives particular scrutiny to the Bingham Inquiry and to the Bank of England's own role - both in supervising BCCI before 1991 and in commissioning the report that led to its closure - and asks whether the response to BCCI's difficulties was proportionate, and consistent with how other banks facing comparable allegations were treated.
It also raises a question that sits outside the official record: whether BCCI's closure fits into a wider pattern of Western action against Muslim-linked financial and state actors seen as a challenge to Western monetary and military dominance - a pattern some would trace through Iraq, Libya and Iran, and through more recent moves by individual states away from the US dollar. BCCI's indirect influence, through Gulf Arab shareholders, over First American Bankshares - a US bank - is examined as one possible source of the alarm that may have driven the speed and severity of the regulatory response. Verdict Deferred does not present this as settled; it presents it as one perspective among several the available evidence permits, distinguishing throughout between what has been proven, what was alleged, and what remains, by design, deferred.
Read more about the allegations revisited in Perspective, or find this title in the Library.