BCCI Will Face Major Charges--Thornburgh

Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh said Sunday that major new federal indictments will be handed down within six weeks for money-laundering and bank regulatory violations in the Bank of Credit & Commerce International scandal.

Noting that there are now federal grand juries sitting in Tampa and Miami, Fla.; Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, the attorney general said: “My expectation is that next month--in a month or six weeks--we’ll be in a position to present the first of the indictments that will result from those investigations.”

However, responding to allegations about the CIA’s extensive involvement with the bank, Thornburgh emphasized that there is no sign U.S. intelligence officials were involved in any criminal activity in dealing with BCCI.

Last month, banking authorities in three countries shut down the bank, with losses expected to exceed more than $10 billion, after bank officials were found to have engaged in fraud, laundering drug money and aiding international terrorist Abu Nidal. CIA officials have acknowledged that they maintained some bank accounts and transferred funds through BCCI and have said that they used the bank as a source of intelligence gathering.

“Nothing has come to my attention that indicates . . . the CIA was involved in any illegal activities with respect to BCCI,” the attorney general declared on the CBS television show “Face the Nation.” Thornburgh did not say whether Justice Department officials had investigated the CIA’s involvement.

The attorney general’s television appearance seemed to be aimed at heading off growing criticism of the Justice Department’s conduct in failing to investigate the bank more thoroughly when allegations surfaced in a Florida case three years ago of its involvement in money-laundering.

Those charges were revived again Sunday when William von Raab, former U.S. commissioner of Customs, complained in a CNN interview that “the Justice Department, the Treasury Department didn’t do anything” during that earlier investigation by federal Customs agents.

“I haven’t heard from Customs agents that they thought anyone was actively discouraging them from investigating,” Von Raab said. “The problem was no one was encouraging them, and they got a sense that this (BCCI) case wasn’t going to help their careers. And that came from the signals that were coming out of the Treasury Department, the signals that were coming out of the Justice Department.”

Thornburgh, who has announced plans to leave the Justice Department to run for the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania, appeared especially eager to show that he and his department have done their utmost to pursue investigative leads and possible violations of the law in the international banking scandal.

According to a congressional source, the Justice Department last week suddenly asked U.S. attorneys around the nation to forward any information they might have about BCCI to the department’s headquarters in Washington--but to do so orally, not in writing.

“People at Justice have realized that Mr. Thornburgh is going to be asked about this when he runs for the Senate,” said this source, who is a Republican.

A Justice Department spokesman was unable to confirm Sunday whether the Justice Department has asked all U.S. attorneys for information on BCCI, but said that such requests have been made in some other cases with nationwide implications, such as the savings and loan scandal. The spokesman did not know whether, in these earlier cases, U.S. attorneys were instructed to respond orally rather than in writing.

In 1988, a federal grand jury in Tampa handed down an indictment charging that BCCI officials had laundered money from drug dealers. In that case, BCCI agreed to pay a record $14-million fine but also negotiated an unusual plea-bargain agreement in which the government agreed it would never charge the bank “with committing any other federal criminal offenses under investigation or known to the government at the time.”

On Sunday, Thornburgh pointed to this earlier case as evidence that the Justice Department has actively pursued the BCCI investigation.

“Our agents and prosecutors have been on the job, they’ve been diligent, they’ve followed up every lead that’s come to them and I expect when the final chapter is written, the role that the federal government has played in prosecuting these (cases) will be an outstanding one,” the attorney general said.

Last week, following an investigation led by New York Dist. Atty. Robert M. Morgenthau, a New York grand jury indicted BCCI and its founder and another executive on charges of money-laundering, fraud, bribery and theft. Morgenthau has said that the Justice Department tried to impede his probe of BCCI.

“Any charges that we tried to impede anybody’s investigation are categorically false,” Thornburgh said Sunday.