The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI

I recommend first watching the movie “The Infilitrator” starring Bryan Cranston. It is available on Amazon Prime Video. Although the movie lacks some historical accuracy, it does provide a clear sense of the danger and intrigue that Mr. Mazur and his team experienced, as described in Robert Mazur’s book, “The Infiltrator: The True Story of One Man Against (sic) the Biggest Drug Cartel in History”. The book has many more intimate details of the operation, but watching the movie first really helped me keep track of the players and understand their personalities. The book gives some interesting background color to Sen. John Kerry’s investigations, as well.After watching and reading both “Infiltrators”, I realized that Mr. Mazur’s story was just a tiny part of the corruption at BCCI (and BNL, or Banco Nazional del Lavoro). I had lived through those scandals of the Reagan and Bush One administration as a college and law student, but had never gone past reading newspaper and magazine articles and engaging in localized political activism to raise consciousness among fellow voters. So I decided to take a journey back in time and re-read about the BCCI scandal. I subsequently purchased and read, in this recommended order, “The Outlaw Bank” by Jonathan Beatty and S.C. Gwynne and then “A Full Service Bank” by James Ring Adams and Douglas Frantz.“Outlaw Bank” is a fascinating look inside the ‘Time’ magazine stories that broke the scandal wide open. “Full Service Bank” is often a plagiarism of “Outlaw Bank”, but was ‘written’ later, has additional details, and is a good, albeit hastily written book fraught with typos and grammatical errors. Still valuable, however.I believe I luckily got the order exactly right: First the movie, then Mazur’s book, then “Outlaw Bank” and finally “Full Service Bank”.This leads, of course, to the question of which multi-national bank(s) fill(ed) the void left by BCCI’s collapse, and why no president, congress, or Federal Reserve chairman since has had the integrity or will to correct this.

The events that inspired this book occurred over 15 years ago, but if you want to understand what is going on now in the world politically and economically, especially in terms of US-European-Middle Eastern-Third World relations, this is still very timely.Outlaw Bank is an excellent and far-reaching piece of well-documented investigative reporting that carefully uncovers the BCCI scandal and the ensuing US cover-up attempts. The sheer scope of the corruption, the deception, the narcotics and clandestine weapons trade involving US government agencies, personnel, and very well-known politicians is stunning. Not only is it as bad as you imagined in your wildest dreams, but many of the same people are still exerting influence (James Baker, Jimmy Carter). BCCI may be gone, but after reading this book and then looking around, you will conclude that not a thing has really changed.The book for the most part stays away from hyperbole, and while I found it a little difficult going in some of the explanations of financial transactions, I realized often that's because I just couldn't believe what I was reading!

Although technically a historical description of the rise and fall of BCCI, it reads like beststelling spy novel. The web of government, crime and finance is amazing. The book is very good at balancing between giving detail but keeping the reader interested. Very recommendable!

Now this is a Story! Why the US Government tried to avoid busting this bank of drug dealers, arms smugglers, Iran Contra conspirators, and the most powerful people in the US government including the FBI, CIA, and the Bush Presidents, is uncovered. Read it! Corruption at the highest levels is exposed!

It is very interesting that this book is not covered more frequently or available in libraries. A very scary travel that these authors took upon themselves to reveal the true story of what just this one bank did and the people involved. I'm sure it continues to this day with others. Why wouldn't it?

Nice!

I think this is a well-written and important book, but boy is it a slog.It's the history of the nefarious Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a Middle-Eastern bank that grew to vast power during the 80s and 90s. It's a story of an organization that might have been run by Dr. Evil, only without the humor. The bank was involved, it seems, in every manner of sordid financial activity: money laundering, terrorism, arms dealing, drug running, etc.But you'd better be seriously interested in the situation if you want to tackle this book, a thick 350+ pages that was not written in a user-friendly style. Moreover, you'd better have your sea legs regarding the technical jargon of banking and investing, or much of this book will be opaque to you.

The resounding collapse of the Arab-owned, Pakistani-run Bank of Credit and Commerce International was the biggest banking scandal in world history. It symbolized more than almost any institution the heinous relationship between government and crime, with its choice clientele of dictators, arms merchants, the CIA, drug traffickers, and terrorists.

This is an excellent account of how two journalists exposed BCCI and the somewhat "innovative" banking practices. The account is gripping, reads like a thriller and involves arms dealers, shady business men, intelligence services and many other aspects of the business world that the few only have to deal with.The book is very focussed on the two authors and how their story unravelled. While this story is exciting in its own right, I would have liked a little more space spent on the actual dealings of BCCI, their practices and how they avoided getting caught for so many years. Irrespective hereof, the book is still well worth the effort - even so many years later!

This is a very interesting book about the notorious Bank of Commerce and Credit International which caused enormous scandal in the 1980s.

The storyline brought back memories. Great book. Left me wanting to know more about who and where the people involved are today.