The beginnings of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International can be traced to three factors. One is a place, the troubled soil of modern Pakistan, a nation created as a refuge for a Muslim minority. Another is the philosophy and heritage of the Muslim religion, a blend of piety, power, and patronage. And the last is a small, intense man named Agha Hasan Abedi, who believed that he was destined for greatness on a global stage.

Abedi was born in 1922 to a Shiite Muslim family in the old Indian city of Lucknow, once the seat of Muslim culture on the subcontinent and home of the decadent Mughul Empire. Old Lucknow teemed with color and court intrigue. Amid its spacious gardens, scented groves, and onion-domed mosques flourished an elegant literature in Urdu, a language derived from the mating of native Hindi with the Persian of the Muslim invaders. As the Mughul emperor in Delhi lost his force, his local agent, the Nawab-Vizir, began to rule in his own right, founding the infamous Kingdom of Oudh.

The British came to Lucknow in force, with a military post nearby that stretched for six miles. One of the great dramas of the Indian mutiny of 1857 was played out against the backdrop of the city's splendid architecture. Muslim rebels besieged 3,000 British troops and families in the massive residency. After eighty-seven days, only 1,000 of the British emerged when they were finally rescued by more troops. The ruins of the residency still stand untouched in a downtown park, testament to what the British describe as an atrocity and what the Third World celebrates as the first great uprising against Western imperialism.

This was the background that shaped the young Abedi, an atmosphere of culture and romance, not commerce. "Lucknow is a city of poets, painters, and Nawabs," explained a later colleague of Abedi's, "not of businessmen".
Abedi's Lucknavi Muslim heritage, remarked another friend, lay behind "his fondness for perfume, gourmet cuisine, fine clothing, art, and the color white, for its purity."

Another Lucknavi tradition had an even more direct influence on Abedi. The city's rulers had been served by courtiers known as tulekdars, renowned for their generosity and love of power. The remnants of this system of service and patronage lived on and Abedi's family had served the rajas as administrators and managers since the middle of the nineteenth century. Abedi's father worked as an estate manager for one of Lucknow's princely Muslim families, the Raja of Mahmoodabad. The raja's patronage helped Abedi get into good Indian schools and the university at Lucknow.

Such assistance was necessary in part because the Abedis were Muslims in a country ruled by the British and dominated internally by Hindus. Many Muslims were relegated to menial jobs, and few rose to real power in British India. Early in his life, Abedi learned a lesson he would carry with him throughout his career: There are advantages to be obtained in cultivating richer, more powerful people.

By all accounts, Abedi was a bright student and he graduated with a degree in law from Lucknow University. However, because he had attended a state university, he had a lower social standing than those Indians who were educated in England or in Europe. And because he was Muslim in a country dominated by Hindus, he was doubly an outsider.

Rather than a career in law, the young graduate decided on banking.

So in 1946, he went to Bombay, the financial center of British India.

There, he took an entry-level position at the newly formed Habib Bank.

He also entered comfortably into an arranged marriage.

The bank was the creation of the Muslim Chamber of Commerce, which had been established under the sponsorship of the Muslim nationalist leader Mohammed Ah Jinnah. Banking, too, was dominated by the Hindus in India, and Jinnah wanted to introduce financial power to the Muslim population. Habib Bank soon carved itself a niche catering to the Muslim minority.

Trust is the linchpin of banking. A customer who deposits money in a bank trusts that it will be returned upon demand, presumably with interest. Likewise, the banker who lends money trusts the borrower to repay it, also with interest. Although the banker customarily hedges this trust by demanding some form of collateral, at the bottom line banking is built on trust. Therefore, banks often start out catering to their own kind. This is particularly true among groups of people bonded together by a common oppression. Who better to trust than people with shared beliefs and backgrounds? This was destined to become a guiding tenet for Agha Hasan Abedi, and one that he would exploit in all corners of the globe.

For Muslims, there is yet another binding factor. In the Koran, Mohammed set forth the basis for the Muslim banking system: "Allah hath blighted usury and made alms-giving fruitful." Instead of the traditional debtor-creditor relationship, the two parties become essentially partners in a strict interpretation of the Islamic system. The bank's function, in addition to making a profit, is to help build society. Usury, interpreted as excessive interest, is prohibited. The Islamic code is followed with varying degrees of strictness in banking, but it was a concept that nonetheless offered another common bond between the Muslims who ran Habib Bank and those who patronized it. It was a philosophy adopted by Abedi and BCCI. As the bank grew, Abedi was careful to share his good fortune with others through various foundations, charities, and financing for social programs.

While at Habib Bank, Abedi made friends with another young man, S. M. Fayyaz. "I found him to be very quiet, very unimpressive," Fayyaz recalled years later. "At that time, I used to tell him, 'You look very lazy.' He would not care about his wardrobe. He would not worry about appearance. He was absentminded. He was happy-go-lucky."

The mid-1940s were exciting and dangerous years to be a young man in India. It was a period of great upheaval, drama, and monumental change on the subcontinent. Gandhi was leading the Hindu majority in its push for freedom from Britain, and the Muslims were organizing their own nationalistic drive under Jinnah's charismatic leadership. Jinnah's was a drive that would bear great fruit for Abedi.

For five centuries before the British arrived, the Muslims had dominated India and its majority population of Hindus. Under a century of British control, their position had declined sharply because the British belief in democracy had shifted power to the more populous Hindus. By the 1940s, the Hindus were better educated and better positioned to take control of the country once the British left. Indeed, the British decision to leave behind a parliamentary democracy in India meant almost certain subjugation of the Muslims.

So, under the leadership of the former barrister Jinnah, a movement had been born to establish a separate nation for India's 80 million Muslims. The British, however, wanted to maintain the economic and political unity that they had created in India. The Hindus, too, opposed the new nation, but Jinnah and his nationalist movement prevailed and, on August 15, 1947, India was partitioned and Pakistan came into existence. The new nation, carved out of the northwestern portion of the subcontinent, was for all Muslims in India. While geographically closer to Asia, culturally Pakistan and its people had strong attachments to the Middle East and shared the religion of Islam.

The movement of Muslims to their new homeland, and Hindus out of it, was the greatest mass migration in history. It also was violent and deadly. Some Hindus who were being displaced, such as the ruling class of Kashmir, fought against being included in Pakistan. Similarly, some established Muslims were reluctant to leave India, even though they were immediately subjected to harassment and worse. As the two-way migration took place, there were countless clashes along dusty and crowded roads. A million Hindus and Muslims were killed or starved to death along the migration routes during the postpartition period. Yet from this violence came new opportunities for Abedi and his compatriots.

Habib Bank moved its headquarters from Bombay to Karachi, then only a medium-sized backwater port on the Arabian Sea. Its staff was entirely Muslim, bright young bankers eager to apply their skills to serve the new cause. Among them were Abedi and Fayyaz, both thrilled to be starting their careers anew at this crucial juncture in the history of their people.

"All of us got better chances," said Fayyaz. "There was great excite ment. Everyone was going to Karachi."

Habib Bank grew to be Pakistan's largest financial institution, and Abedi climbed steadily through the ranks. Already he was demonstrating leadership qualities, an uncanny knack for persuading staff members to work together.

One day in 1956, Abedi demonstrated what would become character istic initiative. An agency of the Karachi municipal government wanted to open a bank branch in its main building, but the government-run National Bank was slow to respond. When Abedi heard about the opportunity, he took a few tables and a safe to the building the next day and opened the newest branch of Habib Bank.

In the late fifties, Abedi was ambitious and restless. He met Mian Yusif Saigol, a textile magnate and patron of one of the so-called Twenty-two Families who were coming to dominate Pakistan's economy. A few months after the meeting, Abedi convinced Saigol to finance the start of United Bank Ltd., the first new bank in Pakistan since the creation of the country.

The traits that would carry him onto the world stage were evident even then. Abedi showed a flair for modern banking. United Bank was the first in Pakistan to computerize its records and establish a research section. At the same time, Abedi opened dozens of branches in poor, rural areas that had been ignored by his rivals at Habib Bank and the National Bank.

"These were hardly profitable, but Abedi was keen on serving poor farmers," recalled Saigol's son, Azam. "He was always more interested in deposits than in careful management." Which is not to say that Abedi lacked ideas about management-only that they were rooted in philosophy, not practical application.

At the time, United Bank's headquarters were on the second floor of an office building in downtown Karachi, by this time the business center of Pakistan. On the first floor was the office of Citicorp, the biggest American bank in Pakistan. One day in the mid-1960s, a young Pakistani who had been educated in England and the United States visited Abedi at his office. He was a member of one of the Twenty-two Families and had recently started a small bank of his own. It had been suggested to him that he discuss the banking business with Abedi, who was making a name for himself through the rapid expansion of United Bank. Instead of strategies and business plans, what the novice banker got was a dose of rhetoric intended to be inspirational.

"New management is needed," the man later would recall Abedi telling him. "Not just here at United Bank, but at all banks. The old, hierarchical structures are outmoded. We need new, circular structures." While the rest of the oration has faded beyond the reach of the man's memory, he does remember that he was so stunned by the strange-talking Abedi that he rose abruptly and said he had another appointment. As he left the session with the little man, the young banker thought to himself, "Well, that's enough bullshit for one day."

Abedi was fixated on expansion. With an economy mired in poverty and no welcome mat in India, he trained his sights on a part of the world where his Muslim heritage might open doors. In 1966, he chartered an airplane and flew off to the Middle East, with a single aide in tow.

This was well before the oil embargo of 1973 turned the Persian Gulf into the richest neighborhood in the world. Nonetheless, there was enough oil revenue flowing into the coffers of the ruling families in Saudi Arabia and a host of smaller city-states to create a new class of millionaires and a potentially lucrative new banking market. In addition, these Arab countries were hiring thousands of Pakistani workers and those workers needed a bank to send their hard-earned paychecks to families back home.

Bearing a finely made carpet, Abedi arrived in Abu Dhabi, a tiny sheikdom on the Gulf ruled by Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan. The sheik, a shrewd but illiterate man, had seized power that year from his brother in a coup organized by his British advisers. Zayed's brother had been a backward, mean-spirited man who was rumored to keep the government's treasure beneath his bed in the fortified palace. (After he was replaced, it was said, officials had discovered that rats had eaten $2 million worth of bank notes.) Zayed was far more generous, and over the years he would lavish millions on upgrading the infrastructure of his country. It was that generous streak that Abedi was destined to tap.

After keeping Abedi waiting for several days, Zayed agreed to meet the young banker from Pakistan. The audience was a successful one and Abedi left the country with the sheik's permission to open a branch of United Bank Ltd. in Abu Dhabi. Among the concessions was an agreement that Abedi serve as banker for the sheikdom's Pakistani workers. Their paychecks could be cashed at United Bank and money wired directly back home.

Abedi left Abu Dhabi with another gift. He had learned that the sheik was passionate about the medieval Arab custom of hunting with falcons. So, soon after returning to Pakistan, he began to invite the ruler there for hunting trips in the rugged mountains in search of the country's native bustard, a nearly extinct bird. Abedi made sure that every detail was in place for these trips. There were air-conditioned Jeeps to carry the sheik and his party, lavish hotel rooms, and a constant stream of gifts.

In all his actions, Abedi was polite and solicitous. It made an impression on Zayed, for it was a reception to which the sheiks of the Persian Gulf had not yet grown accustomed. Zayed, who had no money skills himself, was grateful for the assistance and the respect. And in return, he introduced Abedi to the princelings of the other city-states along the Gulf-Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, which are seven tiny sheikdoms banded together under the leadership of Zayed's al-Nahayan clan. These Gulf states had a combined population of slightly more than four million and occupied a land area smaller than California, but, on a per capita basis, they would soon become the richest neighborhood in the world. And the richest of them would be Abu Dhabi.

The sheiks, devout Muslims, were perfect customers for Abedi's growing bank. Islamic law prohibited them from earning interest on their bank accounts, so bank officials paid out the interest in favors. Among the favors, according to many reports at the time and later, were harems of willing women for the visiting Arabs. This practice was actually quite similar to that of the tulekdars of the Mughul Empire.

These contacts with Zayed and other Arabs were soon to prove essential to Abedi's ambitious dreams, for Pakistan was going through a period of upheaval that set in motion events that would cast Abedi onto the world scene sooner than he had anticipated.

Zulfikar Ah Bhutto was a shrewd politician and theatrical ruler. When he became president of Pakistan in January 1972, after a disastrous war that detached the country's eastern province and created the new nation
of Bangladesh, he displaced a discredited military junta. Trning up at rallies attended by as many as half a million people in those first years, he would wave his arms and weep as he preached his message of love and unity.

"Will you work hard? Will you fight? Will you die? Do I have your vow on it?" he asked crowds in Karachi and all across Pakistan. "Yes, Bhutto Sahib, yes," thousands of voices shouted in response.

Behind the rhetoric, Bhutto ruled with a vindictive spirit. Although he talked of eliminating poverty, he worked much harder at avenging old slights, real and imagined. The keystone of both efforts was his plan to nationalize private industry, which to many stood as the symbol of the corruption and privilege of the oligarchy maintained by the influential families. Soon after taking office, Bhutto nationalized such basic industries as steel, automotive assembly, and chemicals. He also pledged to nationalize the banks, which were thought to be corrupt and under the influence of a favored few. Government control of the banks would be slower to pull off, but Bhutto decided to put their executives on notice. In the days after he was sworn in, he ordered several of Pakistan's bankers placed under house arrest. Among them was Agha Hasan Abedi.

This was a watershed event. While restricted to his home under police guard, Abedi hatched his plan for a new bank. The dream that would become the Bank of Credit and Commerce was conceived as a heady mixture of banking and philosophy with an underpinning of national ism. With Abedi in those critical days was Swaleh Naqvi, a young banker who had worked with him at United Bank and would remain at his side for most of the next two decades.

Among the first outsiders to whom the two men described the plan was a colleague at United Bank named Masihur Rahman. The son of the first Muslim to become chief justice of India's highest court, Rahman had returned to Pakistan in 1961 after obtaining an accounting degree in Britain. He had gone to work for the Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation, which oversaw the nation's heavy industries, and he soon became its chief of finance. In 1966, Abedi and Naqvi had persuaded Rahman to join them at United Bank, where he was made an executive vice president at the age of thirty.

One day in January 1972, Abedi summoned Rahman to his guarded home. It was a Sunday and Rahman, although reluctant to have contact with Abedi while he was under arrest, went to the house. As he sat in the living room sipping tea, he heard Abedi describe his dream of a new, global bank. It would be staffed by Pakistanis, with a sense of family spirit in which profits would go hand in hand with social concerns.

"The few banks that are international are colonial banks from Britain, France, Germany, and lately the United States," Abedi said. "They are really national banks, big national banks of countries. A genuinely global bank could be started to bridge all the Third World countries with the first world. There would be a unique banking structure, which could be very, very useful socially and also very profitable."

Rahman was taken aback by the scope of the scheme. While he believed that Abedi was a man of great vision, this seemed like a fantasy. He said as much to his host, but added, "If it ever materializes, I would certainly like to be part of it."

"Well," said Abedi with a smile, "it's very close to materializing because Sheik Zayed of Abu Dhabi has assured me that he will back such an organization."

Not long after that meeting, the arrest orders against Abedi were lifted. His passport was returned, and he set out on a journey to complete the last step of his dream of creating a new bank.

Transforming vision into reality, Abedi knew, required more than the backing of some Arab sheiks. It required a partnership with an established, international financial organization to provide the instant prestige and access to the broader world that he sought. By late February 1972, he was on an airplane to New York in search of such a partner.

Agha Hasan Abedi was a small man, five feet seven at most, with a broad face and dark hair swept back off his forehead. He had long, wide sideburns, already an out-of-date fashion. Approaching fifty, he wore a dark suit appropriate for the understated propriety demanded in international banking circles. Over the years, he had learned it was necessary for a banker to maintain appearances and to exhibit the most conventional respectability. Back home, however, he would loose the reins on his mystical side and dress all in white, the Muslim color of purity.

On a bitterly cold day that February, he chose a suite at the Waldorf- Astoria in New York City for the most important meeting of his career. The suite suggested accomplishment and financial security without the jarring notes of opulence advertised by less established inns.

His guest was Roy P. M. Carlson. Abe di had gone down to the lobby of the hotel to meet him. On the way back up, the two men had exchanged chitchat about mutual acquaintances in the Middle East and New York's unpleasant weather. Carlson, too, was accustomed to more temperate climes. He was a middle-level executive in San Francisco with the Bank of America. Carlson had been dispatched to New York for this meeting at the recommendation of the bank's man in Pakistan, who had said Abedi had a business proposal worth entertaining. Once the two bankers were in the suite, Abedi wasted no time getting down to the business he had traveled halfway around the world to discuss.

"Mr. Carlson, the banks in Pakistan are going to be nationalized," he said matter-of-factly, as though announcing that the sun would rise in the east tomorrow.

"What?" said the shocked Carlson, whose responsibilities at Bank of America included supervising Pakistan and neighboring India.

"Do not be concerned," said Abedi. "It will be in the pattern of the Indian nationalization. It will not affect foreign branches. Only those banks now owned by Pakistanis, such as the one that employs me."

As often is the case with true believers, Abedi spoke precisely and rapidly, barely stopping for commas and periods. His voice was low and even, with the accented English of his Pakistani countrymen. He was comfortable letting the meaning of his words resonate. He did not need to call attention to them by raising his voice for emphasis.

Without doubt, he had gotten Roy Carlson's attention. And Abedi kept it as he began to describe his dream of creating a new financial empire out of the impending wreckage of Pakistan's largest private banks. He explained that he was the president of United Bank, the second-largest bank in Pakistan. Without providing the details but implying that he had obtained his information from high-ranking officials, Abedi said he had learned about the impending nationalization some weeks earlier. In response, he had set about to create a new opportunity for himself and other Pakistani bankers who would be reluctant to work at government- owned institutions.

Details of Abedi's plan were sketchy. His was a vision. He had a concept, and he had some powerful friends. A group of wealthy Arab sheiks from the Persian Gulf region had already agreed to put up funds for the new bank, he told Carison. Backed by Arab money and run largely by Pakistani bankers, the institution would cater to the expand mg trade and financial needs of the Arab world. That would be just one base.

Plans called for expanding into the world of international banking, particularly in the developing countries. Moreover, he said, thousands of Third World people were forced to go work in developed countries. The new bank would target those communities of people not normally courted by major banks. They were hard-working and saved lots of their pay to send back home. Part of his dream envisioned the creation of an "immigrants' bank."

The exact pattern of growth would be dictated in part by the bank's financial success and in part by its ability to capitalize on Abedi's contacts among the Arabs and leaders of the developing countries. Countries not currently hospitable to foreign banking, especially Western banking, might be persuaded to do business with a bank such as his.

He told the American that he wanted the guidance and financial expertise afforded by partnership with a major international banking organization. He had come to New York, he explained to Carlson, to secure such assistance.

Abedi had first broached the idea of such a partnership a few weeks earlier with American Express, the big U.S. financial services company. American Express was prohibited by U.S. law from owning banks in the United States, but it was interested in acquiring banks in other coun tries.

Without identifying any companies, Abedi told Carlson that he was discussing possible joint ventures with a number of institutions in New York. But, he confided, talks with the others were not going well. In fact, he suggested, it was possible that he would be free to enter serious negotiations with the Bank of America very soon.

Abe di was being forthright when he said that talks had not been going well. American Express was balking at Abedi's price for a partnership. The Pakistani was demanding total control of all administrative and field operations of the new bank.

When the deal started going sour, Abedi had sought a backup partner. He had approached J. D. Van Oenen, the Bank of America manager in Karachi, Pakistan. Van Oenen, a voluble Dutchman, was intrigued. He had forwarded the proposal to the World Banking Division in San Francisco with a recommendation that it be considered. Carlson's presence in New York meant San Francisco had listened.

In 1972, Bank of America was the world's largest bank, a global giant with assets of $100 billion and nearly 80,000 employees worldwide. But, like the other big Western banks, it barely had a foothold in the Persian Gulf. The oil embargo had not yet flooded the region with wealth, but it was still a potentially lucrative market for international banks. Bank of America's sole presence was a five percent interest in a small bank in Dubai, one of the tiny sheikdoms that formed the United Arab Emirates. At B of A headquarters in the heart of San Francisco's financial district, there was keen interest in getting the bank's formidable foot in the door to the region.

Perhaps Abedi could help, thought Carlson. But he also knew that caution was advised. His employers would not jump into a deal like this without certain understandings and information, no matter how eager they might be to get into the Gulf in a big way. Still, the proposal had more appeal to Bank of America than it did to other major financial institutions because of the bank's own heritage.

Bank of America was started in 1904 by A. P. Giannini, the son of Italian immigrant parents. From its origins, Bank of America had been the bank "for the little fellow," as Giannini had been fond of saying. By the end of World War II, the California bank had become the nation's largest commercial bank, and then the world's largest bank.

Despite its size and power, however, Bank of America had remained an outsider. It was a West Coast institution in a country dominated by East Coast and Midwestern banks. In a world controlled by aristocrats, it was a bank founded by the son of immigrants. To the extent that A. P. Giannini's freewheeling spirit still existed in the bank twenty-three years after his death, Bank of America might just go for Abedi's plan.

"Before we could consider anything seriously, we would have to have a full-blown feasibility study done," Carlson explained to Abedi. "The Bank of America has a very rigid and proscribed format for this sort of thing. But I think there might be some interest in this. I really do."

Abedi promised to get back in touch with Carlson if his other discussions proved unfruitful.

A shrewd businessman never reveals more than necessary. Just as Abedi had failed to mention that he had narrowed his options to American Express and Bank of America, he had concealed the true scope of his vision for the new bank.

Carlson had been granted only a glimpse of Abedi's plan, only the details that would entice the huge American bank. Had Abedi confided his real goal, Carlson might have dismissed him as a hopeless dreamer or a nut. Who would believe that the soft-spoken, intensely polite man from Pakistan dreamed of creating the world's largest bank?

As expected, Abedi's talks with American Express collapsed the day after his first meeting with Roy Carlson, so he contacted the American banker again and agreed to provide a more detailed business plan to the Bank of America auditors.

Over the next several weeks, Abedi and some prospective assistants met with Bank of America officials. The plan they worked out called for the American bank to invest $2.5 million in exchange for a twenty-five percent share of Abedi's institution. Abedi's connections in the Persian Gulf, chiefly Abu Dhabi, had brought promises of sizable deposits and business from a number of Arab rulers and businessmen.

In addition to Sheik Zayed, Abedi had commitments from the likes of Kamal Adham, the chief of intelligence in Saudi Arabia and a close adviser to that nation's royal family, and Faisal Saud al-Fulaij, the chairman of Kuwait Airways and a powerful businessman in that tiny nation. There also were promises of business from a host of other sheiks and businessmen scattered around the oil-rich region. The proposed bank represented but one of the common financial interests of these men, and their businesses would become more entangled as the years went on and their personal wealth mounted.

The value of these relationships cannot be underestimated. The nations of the Persian Gulf are closed societies where, for centuries, outsiders have been viewed with suspicion. This was particularly true of Westerners, whose religions had been at war with Islam for a thousand years. Even in 1972, the leaders of these city-states were Bedouins who had spent their formative years in goat-hair tents, traveling the desert on camels.

But change was at hand. The world's appetite for oil was growing. Billions in oil revenues were rolling into the region already, and such basic services as water and electricity were coming to the cities. No longer could these royal leaders keep their cash under the bed. Smart international bankers, and there were many at the Bank of America in those days, sensed the opportunities, but they found the region closed to them. Abedi represented the vital entree for the executives of the giant American bank.

In June 1972, Abedi arrived in San Francisco for a series of meetings. They culminated in a luncheon at the Bankers Club, a private restaurant atop the bank's towering three-year-old headquarters in the financial district. In later years, Abedi would refer to it as "the historic lunch." In attendance were Roy Carlson and members of the Bank of America's managing committee, the top executives who would decide whether to invest the bank's money in this venture.

Abe di proved smooth and convincing as he described the concept and dropped the names of Arab associates. A few days after the luncheon, Carlson's recommendation to go ahead was approved by the managing committee. After all, a $2.5 million investment was not much money to the world's largest bank. And it offered enormous leverage value. The new institution would have the Bank of America logo on its stationery. Bank of America loan officers and executives would make business calls alongside Abedi. The California bank would have two spots on the new institution's board of directors. Presumably the two directors plus periodic checks of the new institution's books by the big bank's auditors would provide sufficient control. As for the operation of the bank itself, that would be the sole province of Abedi.

In its quest for access to the oil-producing nations of the Persian Gulf, Bank of America had done something that American Express had refused to do. It had granted Abedi virtually total control over the day-to-day operations of the bank. This was not B of A's bank. It was Agha Hasan Abedi's bank. He was only using the San Francisco bank's prestige, and getting paid for it, too.

The new bank was to be called the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. An imposing name, reflecting the unfettered ambitions of its founder. It would be based initially in Abu Dhabi, a symbol to the Gulf region that the new bank had the blessing of a powerful ruler. But plans were already in the works to move into other countries. And a strategy was being developed to ensure that Abedi's new bank never faced the threat of nationalization that confronted the institution he had founded in Pakistan.