Key Aides Kept in Dark, One BCCI Founder Says

A founder of the Bank of Credit & Commerce International, saying he was going public despite threats to his life, told Congress on Thursday that the bank’s two top executives built “a lot of Chinese walls” to keep key managers in the dark about illicit operations.

“Not more than 20 people were involved in what you have been hearing about,” Masihur Rahman, former chief financial officer of BCCI, said in testimony before the Senate subcommittee on terrorism, narcotics and international operations.

BCCI, recently indicted by a New York grand jury, has been accused of massive fraud, laundering of drug profits and international arms trafficking.

Rahman, a native of India who worked in the bank’s London office, said he fled to the United States because of threats against his life by a fellow BCCI executive and others after he spearheaded an internal investigation demanded by the bank’s auditors in 1990.

“My wife and children were suffering greatly,” said Rahman, who worked for BCCI from its founding in 1972 until mid-1990. “They were being terrorized by this situation.”

Rahman said that when he told another BCCI executive in London, Mazhar Abba, that he was considering speaking out publicly, Abbas became “furious” and told him: “ ‘I’ve personally killed people in my life . . . , and I’d use the same gun on you.’ ”

Rahman’s American wife, Ellen, sat in back of him in the hearing room, fighting back tears as Rahman described how she put their children under the beds every night for fear they could be shot.

Rahman, 57, said he and other key managers were kept in the dark about the bank’s operations by Agha Hasan Abedi, its primary founder and chief executive, and Swaleh Naqvi, its chief operating officer. He described an organizational structure in which directors of different divisions were separated from each other by “a lot of Chinese walls” and shared information only with Naqvi and Abedi.

Abedi and Naqvi were indicted by a New York grand jury July 29.

Rahman said he and other managers were unaware, for example, that BCCI had secretly acquired First American Bankshares Inc., a Washington-based bank holding company, and Atlanta-based National Bank of Georgia.