While ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar became a close personal friend of the Bush family, as both father and son became US president.
He opened multimillion dollar accounts at Riggs Bank in Washington DC following his diplomatic appointment in 1983. Hundreds of boxes of Riggs records were seized by the FBI after the terrorist attacks of September 2001, in an inquiry into possible terrorist funding.
Prince Bandar and his family were completely exonerated on that point, but investigators discovered financial irregularities at the bank. These led to Senate hearings and Riggs' demise. The bank was discovered operating secret accounts for dictators round the world, including General Pinochet in Chile and President Obiang of Equatorial Guinea.
The US Department of Justice was recently asked to give UK investigators access to the Riggs records. But the SFO was ordered to halt its Saudi inquiry before it could happen.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/baefiles/story/0,,2097098,00.htmlAnd if you don't already have them in a list, you can add some articles about Riggs' involvement with BAE payments to Pinochet:
2004: On 14 July the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations releases a report into the Washington-based Riggs Bank that finds that from 1994 to 2002 the bank helped Pinochet hide US$4-8 million in multiple accounts and two offshore shell companies.
According to the report, Riggs "served as a long-standing personal banker for Mr Pinochet and deliberately assisted him in the concealment and movement of his funds while he was under investigation (in Britain) and the subject of a worldwide court order freezing his assets."
The report also cites a Riggs client profile estimating Pinochet's entire fortune at between US$50 million and US$100 million.
Five days later, on 19 July, US President George W. Bush announces that the US Government will fully investigate the bank's dealings. In Chile the State Defence Council begins an investigation into the evidence in the Riggs report and the origins of Pinochet's fortune. Chilean lawyers, meanwhile, file criminal charges against Pinochet for fraud, bribery, money laundering and other financial crimes. A judicial investigation is also opened into whether Pinochet has been involved in tax fraud and the misappropriation of funds.
At the same time, other investigations are being conducted into the business dealings of 38 of Pinochet's relatives, including his wife, his five children and various grandchildren, siblings and cousins.
http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/pinochet.htmlDetective story that linked £1m Pinochet cash to BAE
Thursday September 15, 2005
The bank records implicating BAE have come to light as the result of a remarkable detective story. It, too, originated in the growing US concern about terrorist money laundering after 9/11. In Washington, a Democratic senator, Carl Levin, and a Republican colleague, Norm Coleman, launched an inquiry into the venerable Washington Riggs Bank. This followed reports that Saudi funds passing through it might have been used for terrorism.
What they found was so shattering that it led to the demise of the bank. Riggs executives had been profiting from handling the cash of criminals and dictators around the world. President Teodoro Obiang of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea was revealed to have looted millions and put it in his family's accounts at Riggs. Gen Pinochet had more than $8m squirrelled away. As the inquiry proceeded it turned up more and more accounts, drawing in more and more hitherto respected financial institutions. One was Coutts, which had first set up accounts for Gen Pinochet in 1993 at its Miami branch. When other banks closed down accounts hiding funds for Gen Pinochet, Coutts took them over. Coutts told investigators it did not realise that the octogenarian was the figure behind two offshore shells controlled by Gen Pinochet's Chilean financial adviser, Oscar Aitkin.
Last March, the senate committee produced a supplementary report, delving into more than 100 accounts Gen Pinochet had set up using false names, the names of his wife and children, or the name of his lawyer. In Santiago, Judge Muñoz seized on this evidence. Like Al Capone, the gangster who was eventually nailed by the US tax authorities, this investigation was seen as an alternative to the human rights cases brought against the former dictator which had stalled or expired as he claimed immunity or ill health. The Chilean authorities fired off legal requests to US courts to gain disclosure of the banking records. Handed over last month, these listed for the first time not only how much money Gen Pinochet had received, but where it had come from. European arms companies were high on the list. BAE was the most prominent.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/chile/story/0,13755,1570165,00.html
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