A Forthcoming Book
Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) - known to those who worked within it simply as "BCC" - grew in under two decades from a modest Luxembourg-registered venture into one of the largest privately-owned banking groups in the world, with a presence in 73 countries with a network built deliberately across the developing world. This book tells that story in full: how the Bank was built, what it set out to do differently from its Western counterparts, and how, in 1991, it was brought to an abrupt end.
BCCI did not collapse and did not fail. It never defaulted on its obligations to depositors or creditors. It was closed while still operating as a going concern, through coordinated regulatory action led by the Bank of England, at a moment when a restructuring backed by the government of Abu Dhabi had already been agreed in principle and was awaiting implementation. The Bank That Was Buried sets out, in detail, what was actually happening inside BCCI in its final years, what the regulators, particularly the Bank of England, knew and when, and how a bank operating across the Global South came to be shut down almost overnight.
Drawing on the BCCI's own internal record - its structure, its people, its operations across five continents - alongside the public inquiries and reporting that followed its closure, this book asks a question that has rarely been asked with any rigour: was BCCI's ending inevitable, or was it decided?
Explore the Bank's history in BCCI the Bank, or find this title alongside other BCCI-related reading in the Library.