Sultan Loses $10 Million--by 1 Digit

A $10-million donation from the Sultan of Brunei to Nicaragua’s contras went astray last year because Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams gave the sultan the wrong bank account number, U.S. officials said Thursday.

Reportedly because a 6 was mixed up with a 7, the sultan transferred the money into the wrong Swiss bank account--apparently leaving an unknown beneficiary $10 million richer.

“Someone’s account, somewhere, has $10 million in it--and the sultan would like it back,” one official said.

He said the sultan, whose wealth is estimated in the billions, has contacted the Credit Suisse bank in Geneva and asked that it find the recipient of the money and obtain a refund. But so far, he said, there has been no word of where the money went.

It remains unclear whether Abrams or then-White House aide Oliver L. North, who gave him the account number, made the initial error.

“The number is on a little scrap of paper that we’re keeping in a safe,” the official said. “Elliott couldn’t believe that he got it wrong, but he wasn’t sure.”

Abrams and Secretary of State George P. Shultz solicited the contribution from the oil-rich sultan in August, at a time when the contras had run out of money and were $2.5 million in debt.

Abrams initially arranged for the contras to open an account to receive the aid. But then, apparently at North’s suggestion, he told the sultan instead to direct the money to Lake Resources Inc., the company that retired Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord used to funnel profits from the Reagan Administration’s secret Iranian arms sales to his own contra aid program.

North told Secord that the sultan’s check was in the mail, but the money never arrived, Secord told House and Senate investigating committees Thursday.

“This went over a period of weeks and weeks and weeks that we were supposed to be expecting a sizable donation,” he said.

Finally, he said, North asked him to try to trace the money, but that proved impossible. “You can’t trace something you don’t have,” Secord said.

Secord’s financial manager, Albert A. Hakim, also told congressional investigators that the money never arrived.

Alan D. Fiers, director of the CIA’s Central America Task Force, told the White House commission on the scandal last year that he was amazed to learn about the $10-million mix-up.

“That probably left me as speechless as anything in this whole endeavor, that $10 million which we sorely needed . . . went into a bank account in Geneva and just disappeared,” Fiers told the presidential commission headed by former Sen. John Tower (R-Tex.). “It just left me dumbstruck and still does.”