Banker Accused of Laundering Money Acted as Noriega Financier

An international banker arrested in a Customs Service sting over the weekend was the personal financier for Panamanian leader Gen. Manuel A. Noriega, supervising a $20-million secret account that funded payoffs to Panamanian politicians and paid travel and credit card expenses of Noriega, his wife and three children, according to Senate testimony released Wednesday.

Amjad Awan, a Miami-based officer of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International who was indicted this week on money-laundering charges, testified that he performed a wide range of personal services for Noriega, including flying to Panama for monthly meetings to review Noriega’s account and, once in 1982, accepting a cash deposit of “several hundred thousand dollars” from Noriega.

“I made an effort to cultivate him,” Awan said in closed-session testimony Sept. 30 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on terrorism, narcotics and international communications. “. . . When he (Noriega) came to the United States, I used to take care of his expenses here.”

The testimony provided evidence of the close and mutually dependent relationship between Noriega and BCCI, a Luxembourg-based bank that this week was charged in a Tampa, Fla., indictment of laundering $14 million in illicit drug profits on behalf of Colombia’s Medellin cocaine cartel.

A Senate investigator said Wednesday that the indictment of BCCI and nine of its officers, including Awan, were the “tip of the iceberg” and that the bank played an even more critical role in laundering drug profits, including payoffs allegedly collected by Noriega, through the world banking system.

The bank, which operates in 73 countries and has about $20 billion in assets, has denied that it was “knowingly” involved in money laundering and insisted Tuesday that its indicted officers were “innocent victims of circumstances.”