Senator says bin Laden had accounts in bank shut down in fraud scandal (BCCI)

AP via MSNBC ^ | 09/27/2001

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Investigators have learned that Osama bin Laden was among those with accounts in a bank shut down in 1991 in one of the world’s biggest banking scandals, Sen. John Kerry said Wednesday. The Bank of Credit and Commerce International was closed after bank regulators around the globe linked it to fraud, theft, secret weapons deals, terrorist financing and drug-money laundering. Investigators didn’t know it at the time, but it turns out bin Laden had accounts at BCCI, said Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who led an investigation into the Third World bank. The BCCI-bin Laden tie was first reported by MSNBC.com's Christopher Byron Tuesday.

“WE HAVE LEARNED SINCE from law enforcement and intelligence that when we shut it down, we dealt him a very serious economic blow because of the size of those accounts and his dependency on that flow,” Kerry said.

Saudi Arabian multimillionaire bin Laden and his al-Qaida network are the prime suspects in the Sept. 11 hijackings of four U.S. commercial jetliners and attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

U.S. officials are trying to trace the money behind bin Laden’s network, leading to a renewed push by Kerry and other lawmakers for tougher money laundering laws.

Kerry commented on BCCI’s link to bin Laden at a Senate Banking Committee hearing on money laundering legislation.

Arab terrorist Abu Nidal and Colombian cocaine cartels also were among the bank’s 1.3 million customers. Depositors lost millions of dollars when authorities seized BCCI’s assets.

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