Reply #13: Pakistan investigates BCCI role in sale of nuclear knowhow

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.pakistan-facts.com/index.php?topic=wmd-proliferation

Pakistan investigates BCCI role in sale of nuclear knowhow

Wednesday, February 04 2004 @ 06:11 PM CST

Stephen Fidler and Farhan Bokhari

The Pakistani government is examining records of the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International in its investigation into the role Pakistani scientists may have played in selling nuclear knowhow to Iran, North Korea and Libya. According to bankers, some of whom worked with BCCI before it collapsed in 1991, Pakistani investigators have sought the help of former BCCI employees to try to uncover payments made to scientists connected with Pakistan's nuclear programme. BCCI's role in financing Pakistan's own nuclear efforts has long been the subject of scrutiny. In 1992, a report into BCCI from a US Congressional sub-committee headed by Senator John Kerry, now a leading Democratic presidential contender, said "there is good reason to conclude that BCCI did finance Pakistan's nuclear programme". Though it said the issue deserved further investigation, there was little public follow-through.

This year, however, as evidence has mounted that Pakistani scientists helped the uranium enrichment programmes of Iran, North Korea and Libya, the Pakistani government has launched an investigation. A government spokesman in Islamabad said that anybody found to have passed on secrets would be punished, but denied that the government approved any transfers. At least 11 Pakistani scientists and officials - as well as the so-called father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan - have been questioned.

BCCI helped the Pakistani government under General Zia ul Haq, the military dictator killed in a 1988 plane crash, to channel payments from the US Central Intelligence Agency to fighters seeking to oust Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Soviet troops withdrew in 1989 but former BCCI officials said the relationship for organising undocumented payments for influential Pakistanis continued until the bank's collapse. One former BCCI banker who said he organised funds transfers on behalf of senior military officers in the Zia regime commented: "I'm not surprised that the Pakistanis are now looking to put together dossiers on some of their scientists receiving payments through BCCI." He said that over the past two months, Pakistani officials had travelled to the Middle East, looking for evidence of nuclear scientists receiving payments through BCCI.

Another former BCCI banker said that establishing payments to Pakistani nuclear scientists through the bank could provide evidence about the so far undocumented role of senior former Pakistani military officers in overseeing the transfer of nuclear knowhow to other countries. The investigation has prompted speculation among western intelligence officials and diplomats over the extent to which General Zia, leader of a frontline anti-communist state, in fact sanctioned the transfer of nuclear knowhow to Iran. In the past four to eight weeks, he said the Pakistani investigators have been seeking evidence of payments made to Mohammad Farooq, one of the nuclear scientists at the centre of the investigation. Pakistani officials are said to have focused on Mr Farooq as a possible contact between the Iranians and Mr Khan.