A Full Service Bank: How Bcci Stole Billions Around the World

This is a good book on a great banking scandal. Possibly the greatest banking scandal in modern history. For a taste of the scope of the thing, it involved Clark Clifford, one of the great Washington fixers of all time, plus Abu Nidal, the Palestinian terrorist, and Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, the guy who brought you the UAE and a couple of billions dollars in lost money. There are law firms and accountants still working to retrieve some of this money today, more than ten years after the bank collapsed. Most business and banking scandals are really just complicated variants of simple scheme or mistake. LTCM borrowed more than they could afford. ADM was involved in price fixing, and BCCI was basically a pyramid scheme.*/** Admittedly a huge and complex pyramid scheme, but a pyramid scheme all the same. I am constantly amazed that people think they can get away with this like this, but I guess one should never underestimate the greed and stupidity of the average person. Tracking who did what to whom when is a complicated job in this scandal, and Adam and Frantz do a good job of keeping it all clear. This book doesn't have the great writing of an Kurt Eichenwald book, but it does keep all the facts straight. * A pyramid scheme is where money from new suckers goes to pay the older suckers while the people who set up the scheme get mad rich. *Enron is the exception here. You could say Enron was the result of shady accounting but that is really oversimplifying Enron's use of a pretty insane set of accounting tools and debt restructuring instruments.

This is a good read, very educational on Middle-Eastern and Southeast Asian business practises. Instead of all that garbage they teach at business schools regarding international commerce, they should provide books such as this one as required reading.This is how things really happen. It details innumerable 'behind-the-scenes' business deals. Provides a great insight to the anatomy of shady international banking deals, not to mention arms deals, drug trafficking and money laundering.I know some of the people mentioned in this book and it is spot-on with its descriptions of them. This book may be a little out of date but its a worthy read and will be for years to come.