Bank Pleads Guilty to Money Laundering : Crime: Financial institution, linked to Noriega, was accused of handling $32 million in Colombia drug funds.

A Luxembourg-based bank pleaded guilty today in a drug-related money-laundering case, agreeing to five years’ probation and forfeiture of $14 million in assets.

The Bank of Credit and Commerce International, accused of helping launder an estimated $32 million in Colombian drug lords’ proceeds from cocaine sales in the United States, agreed to a last-minute plea agreement to avert a trial.

The bank was to have gone on trial Thursday in Tampa federal court along with seven former bank officers, including one who said he had been the personal banker for deposed Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega.

“The government and the defendant have entered into a plea agreement,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Mark Jerkowski said during a court hearing. “It was executed this morning.”

A lawyer for one of the individual defendants in the case demanded that other defense attorneys be given full details of BCCI’s plea agreement, contending it could affect their cases.

BCCI, a privately held bank owned by a Middle Eastern consortium with more than 400 offices worldwide, had been said to be close to reaching a plea agreement in which it was to cooperate with the government and provide information on Noriega’s finances.

After a two-year undercover investigation by U.S. Customs agents, BCCI was indicted along with more than 80 individuals in October, 1988, on charges of laundering more than $32 million for Colombia’s Medellin cocaine cartel.

BCCI was the first major bank ever indicted on U.S. money laundering charges, and law-enforcement officials said it was the most important case of its kind in U.S. history.