Truell, Peter and Gurwin, Larry. False Profits: The Inside Story of BCCI, the World's Most Corrupt Financial Empire. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1992. 522 pages.

Peter Truell, a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal based in Washington DC, and Larry Gurwin, a veteran financial writer who now works for a private investigative firm in DC, have put together the best book yet on the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Both authors were early BCCI watchers -- Gurwin with an article in Regardie's in May 1990, and Truell in the WSJ a few days later.

This is the story of banking fraud on a massive scale, beginning with Pakistani financiers and Arab sheikhs, and ending with hundreds of plush offices in 73 countries. BCCI sucked in Washington power elites, former U.S. presidents, drug money from Afghanistan to Panama, arms smugglers, and terrorists -- all in the same breath. Ultimately BCCI was a $30 billion Ponzi scheme that came crashing down in 1991, robbing depositors of their life savings throughout the Third World. Clark Clifford and Robert Altman (who owns a mansion and is married to Wonder Woman) said "Oops, we had no idea!" as BCCI was stuffing millions into their pockets. Clifford is too old for trial but Altman will be tried in 1993. Most cynics expect Altman to do as well as Michael Milken, who received a ten-year sentence in 1990 and then walked out of prison, still a very rich man, after serving less than two.
ISBN 0-395-62339-1

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