On November 24, 1987, Bob Mazur walked into the offices of Financial Consulting in New Port Richey, Florida, and found a message waiting to call a Mr. Hussain at BCCI in Panama City. It was a telephone call that would change the course of Operation C-Chase in stunning fashion, moving it from the minors to the major leagues, although ironically Mazur didn't bother to tape the conversation when he returned the call.

Syed Aftab Russain, a junior officer at BCCI in Panama City, informed him that someone had come to the bank to cash a check drawn on Mazur's IDC International account. However, there was a discrepancy. The amount on the check in numbers was $110,300, but the amount in writing was an even $110,000. Hussain wanted to know which amount to honor.

Mazur was flustered. He knew the check was from a presigned batch that he had sent Mora after a recent deposit from a pickup of drug cash in Detroit. Since he had no way of knowing which amount was right, he said he would have to talk to someone else and get back to Hussain.

Before hanging up, Hussain suggested politely that Mazur contact him in the future before checks of this type were to be cashed. Mazur could provide Hussain with the amount of the check and the name of the payee in advance to avoid any confusion.

As Mazur discussed the conversation with his fellow agents, it began to worry him. It was unusual that a banker would call from Panama about a discrepancy. Why not just reject the check and leave it up to the person holding the paper to get a new one? With Operation Pisces fresh in everyone's mind, Mazur feared he was about to get the boot at the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Or had they stumbled onto something else here?

By late November, the operation had laundered a total of roughly $6 million in drug cash. Most of the transactions had been handled through about 200 checks issued on the account at Florida National Bank, but the last $2.2 million had gone through the IDC International account at the Bank of Credit and Commerce International in Panama. The new system seemed promising although it had taken a while to get started.

Back in the summer of 1987, Rick Argudo had quit BCCI to take a job with another bank in Tampa. His replacement, Dayne Miller, seemed as cooperative as Argudo when Mazur opened the IDC account. When Miller had asked for bank references for the company, Mazur replied that IDC was a recently purchased shell corporation. The banker said that he understood. Mazur filled out the account forms. Miller assured him the forms would be kept in Panama. As an added precaution, Miller said, Mazur should allow BCCI Panama to mail his statements to Miller so that no one would be aware of the Panama account.

Mazur said he was also interested in BCCI accounts in Liechtenstein and Puerto Rico. Since BCCI did not have offices in those countries, Miller suggested that Mazur supplement the Panama account with accounts at either BCCI in Luxembourg or Banque de Commerce et de Placements, an affiliate of BCCI in Switzerland known within the bank as BCP.

Within a couple of weeks, Miller had delivered the IDC checks.

Because of the slowdown caused by fallout from Operation Pisces,

Mazur did not turn over any presigned checks on the new account to

Mora until September. And drug money was not moved through BCCI for nearly two months after that, more than a year since the start of Operation C-Chase.

Laundering drug money through BCCI was complicated, but from his years of working on cases of money launderers, Mazur had broken the process down into several steps.

The first step was picking up the cash. On November 9, 1987, Emir Abreu and another agent went to Detroit and picked up $609,045. The money was counted and deposited by government agents in an account set up with the knowledge of bank officials at the National Bank of Detroit. Step two: The next day, the $609,045 was wire-transferred to Mazur's Financial Consulting account at Florida National Bank. Step three: On November 12, $590,775 was wired to the Bank of Credit and Commerce in Panama City and credited to Mazur's new IDC account; the amount was less than the original $609,045 because Mazur had kept his commission. Step four: Gonzalo Mora, Jr., filled out the presigned

checks in the names of the drug suppliers or their brokers and passed them out over several days. It was the discrepancy in amounts on one of these checks that had caught the attention of Syed Russain in Panama.

After his initial conversation with Hussain on November 24, Mazur telephoned Gonzalo Mora, Jr., in Colombia to find out the right amount for the check. Then he called Hussain again that same day. Mazur said that the check should have been written for $110,300. A new one would be issued in that amount and Hussain should cash it when it was presented at the bank later. By the way, Mazur added, another $899,080 would be deposited in the account by the following day.

Again, Hussain was eager to be of service. Although still a trainee, he had been instilled with the drive to bring in new deposits. Hussain said he would be in Miami in early December. Perhaps they should get together. Before hanging up, Hussain told the American: "BCCI is a full service bank."

It was a Saturday morning, but undercover was a seven-day-a-week job. Bob Mazur was nervous as he drove toward his ten o'clock appointment with Syed Hussain on December 5, 1987. He got lost for ten minutes even though he was looking for one of the best-known corners in Miami-B rickell Avenue and Eighth Street, which was known locally as Calle Ocho and represented the main street of the city's thriving Cuban district. At the point where Calle Ocho met Brickell, it was all high-rise office and residential towers fronting the blue waters of Biscayne Bay.

Finally, Mazur found the address and turned into the Brickell Key Condominiums, a tall building situated on a wedge-shaped island where the Miami River emptied into the bay. It was on this spot that Seminole Indians conducted their first trade with the settlers of the New World. It had not turned out to be such a good deal for the Seminoles.

Waiting in the lobby was a man who was large and round, soft-spoken and shy. Syed Hussain, known to his friends by his middle name of Aftab, had just turned thirty. He had only a two-year degree in economics and had tried several jobs without success, including selling Oriental rugs. An uncle who worked for BCCI finally got him a job with the bank and he had been shipped off to Panama as a $20,000-a-year trainee early in 1987.

BCCI was Hussain's best job, but he still was not making enough to support his wife and new baby, and to pay for medical care required by his retarded son, so he had kept his eyes open and watched for an opportunity to move up fast.

Though many of BCCI's customers in Latin America were merchants of Arab and Jewish descent, the bank's principal marketing target was the "high net worth" individual, a person with the means to make deposits of millions of dollars at a time. One of the intriguing things Hussain had spotted soon after arriving at BCCI in Panama was that senior officers accepted these large cash deposits without asking ques tions. Much of that money, he learned, went to the "manager's ledger," where specially numbered accounts, code-named MIL, were kept segregated and confidential.

It was luck that had brought Hussain into the flap over the check, and it would turn out to be the worst luck of his life. There had been a commotion in the branch when a teller refused to cash the check, and Hussain, who had gone over to calm the excited Colombian courier trying to cash it, had wound up calling Mazur after examining the brief history of the IDC International account.

Hussain had seen immediately that the American's method of moving money through the bank was amateurish. Guessing what Mazur had been up to was not hard, even though the IDC account had been open only a short time. Big deposits were flowing into the account, and money brokers were drawing out large amounts with checks that bore Mazur's signature but not his handwriting in the other spaces. Hussain had even sensed the customer's discomfort when asked which amount was right on the $110,300 check. The guy didn't know what the right figure was because he hadn't written the check. Hussain had a better idea. And the novice banker was about to see how far his better idea and that bit of initial luck would carry him.

As he guided Mazur to a small alcove off the lobby, Hussain explained in poor English that he was in Miami because his son required specialized medical care. The two men sat in low chairs, talking in whispers. Mazur placed his briefcase on the coffee table in front of them. Inside, the hidden tape recorder was spinning silently.

"What type of service do you want from us and what do you expect from us?" asked Hussain in the conversation picked up by the recorder.

"Okay. As of, well, thus far, I've had most of my dealings with either the Tampa agency of BCCI or your branch of BCCI," replied Mazur, who decided this was not a brush-off but a pitch. "I anticipate that I will be expanding my contacts with BCCI branches to include some of them in Luxembourg and others in Europe, too. I have a definite need to aid clients of mine who at times are looking to place funds in investments and to transfer funds. But the thing that is of utmost desire for me is to maintain the confidentiality of the client's transactions with you peo ple."

"We are totally, all the confidentiality, all the secrecy," Hussain said, the words tumbling out. "Even sometimes our own staff doesn't know what is happening."

Here was the opening. Hussain took it. Clients who wanted privacy, he said, should not use checks. "I would definitely advise you, my personal advice is don't use a check," said the young banker. "Don't write the check. Don't give anybody checks."

Was he referring to the recent government crackdown in Panama? asked Mazur. Yes, Operation Pisces, said Hussain. The only people who got caught were ones who used checks, he explained. Clients who used another popular method had not been caught.

Hussain proposed his alternative. Instead of turning over checks to the money brokers, Mazur should open an account for $2 million at the BCCI branch in Luxembourg, one of the more secure banking havens in Europe. The funds could be placed in an interest-bearing certificate of deposit. Then Mazur could take a loan for an equal amount at the Panama branch, minus the bank's fee, which would be negotiable. When the $2 million CD matured, it would be used by the bank to retire the loan.

For Mazur, this was a new wrinkle on the cash-collateralized advance scheme: In case some nosy third party made inquiries, Mazur could designate a parcel of property as security. But that was just a cover. "Definitely, we are not going to give you a loan against the property," explained Hussain. "We'll give you a loan against the dollar deposit."

Mazur wondered how extensive this practice was at BCCI. Argudo had described the same basic transaction to him. Was it in the bank's training manual? How many millions of dollars were being washed through BCCI in this manner?

Misjudging the contemplation for hesitation, Hussain said he under stood that selling the idea to clients might be tough for Mazur. "I know that they are very rigid in their ways," he said. "They are very fidgety, very devious or rigid. They are very tough to handle."

To ease Mazur's concern for secrecy, Hussain said that such loans were handled by what he called "an inner team." He offered to introduce Mazur to some members of that team who worked in the Miami office. "They are all professional and top high-level people," he said. "They know how to talk and when to talk. They don't talk loose."

Hussain was eager to close a deal. Could Mazur possibly have a deposit by the end of December? The implication was that it would seal the bargain for special service for Mazur.

"It's good for the bank and then the bank can help the clients," he said, fumbling for a business card as the two men started to part. He had left the cards upstairs, so he hurried to get one. By the time he came down and the men exchanged farewells, it was twenty minutes past noon. Mazur promised to get back in touch with Hussain as soon as possible about a new transaction. He said he was not sure of the timing.

As he walked away, Mazur turned the clasp on his briefcase, switching off the recorder.

In slightly more than two hours, the previous year's work had become just a prelude. Operation C-Chase was getting its first look at a new, far more important quarry.

Driving back to the airport, Mazur could not believe what had occurred. Here was a jumor bank officer laying out a scheme that seemed to be routine within this huge international bank. When he replayed the tape for other C-Chase agents, they were equally surprised and exultant.

"Here was this guy laying the whole thing out," exclaimed Steve Cook, who was sharing the supervisory duties of case agent with another senior Customs agent, Laura Sherman.

The agents wanted to strike fast-secure the deal with Hussain and follow the new trail-but they needed a big chunk of money to launder. That was out of their control. That was why Mazur had been indefinite about when he would do the new deal. They would have to wait, hoping that Hussain did not return to Panama before they came up with the cash.

When Alvaro Uribe first came through the door with his tip about Gonzalo Mora, Jr., a year and a half earlier, an assistant U.S. attorney in Tampa named Mark Jackowski had been assigned to supervise the investigation. A veteran drug prosecutor, Jackowski had paid scant attention to C-Chase since then. He figured the best the agents would do was round up some money launderers and maybe a minor drug supplier. It just did not appear too promising. In addition, he had a number of other cases under way that seemed far more significant, among them the Tampa investigation of General Manuel Noriega's connection to drug dealers.

But when Laura Sherman told him what happened with Hussain on December 5, Jackowski was suddenly very interested. C-Chase might snare a bank in its net and that would be a big case. So the prosecutor began taking a more active role in what would prove to be a dangerous dance to keep the investigation on track, fighting off incursions from the DEA and even other offices of the Customs Service itself.

On December 8, word came that a million dollars in cash was ready for pickup in Detroit from Don Chepe's people. Speed was vital. Abreu flew to Detroit that day to get the money and, rather than take the time to return to Tampa, he had the money counted in Detroit and deposited in a friendly account at the National Bank of Detroit. The following day, $1.18 million was wired to Mazur's account at Florida National Bank.

That was all Mazur needed. Shortly before nine o'clock on the morning of December 9, he telephoned Hussain in Miami. Mazur said that he had received a large amount of money and wanted to do a deal. They agreed to meet late that afternoon at the bank's offices in Miami.

The Bank of Credit and Commerce International's offices were at 1200 Brickell Avenue, one of the gleaming towers in the heart of Miami's financial and legal communities, both of which had prospered enor mously in recent years by catering to the drug trade. Miami defense lawyers who used to specialize in white-collar cases had even been tagged with a new name: the white powder bar.

BCCI's operations were spread over three floors of the building; the bank's fast-growing Latin American and Caribbean business on fifteen, day-to-day operations on seventeen, and special transactions on nine teen. Mazur took the elevator to nineteen.

Sipping coffee in a conference room overlooking Biscayne Bay, Mazur explained to Hussain that he wanted to try the scheme outlined on Saturday. He would deposit $1.18 million in a certificate of deposit and be issued a loan for a corresponding amount. He listened as Hussain went over the details of the agreement. The money would be transferred directly to Panama without Mazur's name or account number showing up. In Panama, the money would be deposited in a special account on the "manager's ledger." Only a handful of people would be aware of the account's existence and it would identified by number, not name. The number would be preceded by the letters M/L, for manager's ledger. The loan proceeds would be recorded as a credit to the IDC International account in Panama.

Three times during the meeting, Hussain had telephoned someone and spoken in Urdu, the language of the Mohajir Muslim refugees in Pakistan. Then he stepped out of the room and returned with documents for Mazur to sign. The papers opened the new account, which would be number M/L306. Hussain also proposed a code name, John Hussain, to be used when Mazur contacted the bank.

Then came the delicate part of Mazur's job. Jackowski had stressed before the meeting that conviction under the money-laundering statute would require that the banker be aware of the source of the funds involved in the transaction. That meant Mazur had to let Hussain know clearly that his clients were traffickers. If Hussain balked or threw Mazur out, BCCI and the banker would be in the clear. If not, well, that would be another story. Luck provided a dramatic vehicle for the disclosure.

"One of the reasons for my initial inability to plot a course here with you, as of last week, is that there was the untimely demise of one of my client's associates," Mazur said matter-of-factly. "And I see it's in the paper. And it's just something that we ought. . . when it comes to money, they don't have a whole lot of patience."

With a chuckle, he handed Hussain a clipping from the St. Petersburg Times dated December 6, 1987. The clipping recounted the bloody death of a notorious Medellin cartel figure, Rafael Cardona Salazar. He and a youn~ secretary were inside his classic car dealership outside Medellin when they were cut down by a barrage of automatic weapon fire from a gang of men. At the time, the article said, Salazar was the subject of an extradition request from the U.S. government. A few hours before Salazar was slain, six young men had been killed at a house in Medellin. The article said police believed the killings were linked to rivalries among narcotics traffickers in Medellin.

"You know this, this man?" asked Hussain incredulously.

"Mr. Salazar. Not directly, but indirectly."

"How, how was he killed?"

"He was gunned down. Machine-gunned."

"Huh."

Mazur stared intently at the young banker and explained: "The fact of the matter is that I will discuss only with you, but never with anyone else ever again, is that obviously this money comes from some of the largest drug dealers in South America and that is something that needs to be kept between us. I need to have complete confidence in you as an individual."

Hussain did not back out of the deal, and he would later claim it was because he was too scared by Mazur's chilling nonchalance over the murders. Instead, he negotiated the bank's fee for the transaction. It would be one and a half percent of the deposit, $17,700. And it would be handled discreetly. The interest rate on the loan would be greater than the interest earned on the CD. The bank would pocket the difference as its share of the deal, up front of course.

"This drug-related money," said Hussain, "they put their money in CDs?"

Yes, sometimes they do, Mazur said. And he was working on them to do it more often.

The next day, Mazur picked up Hussain at the Brickell Key condos and they drove to the bank to finish the deal. With Hussain whispering instructions to him, Mazur told a woman at Florida National Bank to wire $1.18 million to Panama for him. The money would be transferred to a correspondent bank in New York, which would then notify BCCI to credit account M/L306 in Panama. The transfer would take place through CHIPS, the computerized electronic transfer system for moving dollars around the world swiftly and anonymously. Once the money

arrived in M/L306, the "loan" proceeds would be transferred to the IDC account, minus the interest differential. In their haste to make the transaction, they had decided to forgo the added cover of a European account.

Hussain wondered how much of this sort of business he might expect from his new customer. About $5 million a month, Mazur replied. Hussain said he would like a large deposit by the end of the year. It would help make the young banker and his office look good when the bank examined and ranked each of its branches worldwide.

Later in December, undercover agents collected about $1.5 million in pickups in Detroit and New York, but rather than simply passing it througb Hussain, the money was to be used as leverage. It would lead them higher up at BCCI. It was apparent that Hussain was a low-level employee. Someone had taught him this scheme. At the first meeting, Hussain had mentioned higher-ranking people who "didn't talk loose." On December 9, he had made three telephone calls and obviously received instructions. It was simple. Dangle the money at BCCI and see who came running this time.

On December 22, Mazur telephoned Hussain, who had returned to Panama. He said he wanted to set up another loan back, this time for

$1.5 million. But Mazur still had not received all the documents from the first deal, so he told Hussain that he wanted a contact in the bank's

Miami office, someone closer. "Is there someone who can really be trusted?" asked the agent.

"Amjad Awan is on the team," replied Hussain. He would arrange a meeting for Mazur.

Amjad Awan had been rehabilitated. He had been transferred out of Panama in mild disgrace over the loss of $3.7 million in the fake Treasury bond scam in the middle of 1984, but he had retained the

Noriega account, which played a major role in his comeback.

Since moving to BCCI's representative office in Washington, D.C., Awan's principal duty had remained taking care of the Panamanian dictator and his expensive tastes. Noriega's account at BCCI was used to pay for trips around the world for Noriega, his wife, and his three daughters. Usually, they would be accompanied by an entourage of security men and associates. Their bills, too, were paid from the all-purpose, bottomless slush fund.

Awan provided personal service, BCCI style. He arranged for hotels and booked airplane reservations, hired limousines and paid for Dom Perignon champagne and the flowers that filled Noriega's hotel suites. Most of this he put on his own American Express card. When the bills came in, he simply paid them out of Noriega's account. Often, he would be on hand to greet the general and assist him when he traveled to the United States.

One such occasion was particularly memorable for Awan. Noriega had flown to New York on June 8, 1986. He wanted to spend a few days in the city before going on to Washington, where he would present an award. Re flew on a Boeing 727 specially outfitted for him and assigned to the Panamanian military. Marijuana smuggler Steven Kalish had bought the plane for Noriega for $2.2 million as a favor back in 1983.

In New York, Awan had booked an $850-a-night suite for the general and his wife at the Helmsley Palace on Madison Avenue, their favorite hotel. He also had arranged for limousines to whisk Noriega to his meetings and his wife, Felicidad, to Bloomingdale's and her other favorite shopping spots. Awan himself had gone to New York and rented a room in the same hotel to oversee the arrangements.

On June 12, Noriega flew to Andrews Air Force Base, the installation outside Washington, D.C., used by U.S. government planes and aircraft belonging to VIPs. Later that day, he was to present a Panamanian medal to the head of the Inter-American Defense Board, U.S. Lieutenant General Robert Schweitzer. Noriega's presence in Washington and the award presentation were clear signals to the world of his alliance with the Reagan administration. But before the plane bought for him with drug money even landed, Manuel Noriega had become the victim of a carefully planned, bitterly ironic trick played by the editors of The New York Times.

When Noriega stepped off the jet at Andrews that morning, he was fuming. On the trip down, he had seen the morning's Times. Atop the front page was the headline "Panama Strongrnan Said to Trade in Drugs, Arms and Illicit Money." Below was an explosive story by Seymour M. Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter. Timed by the paper's editors to coincide with the visit to Washington, it accused Noriega of horrendous crimes-his links to the torture and beheading of one of his political rivals, Hugo Spadafora, his participation in money laundering and drug trafficking.

By the time Awan spoke with him later that day, Noriega was still furious about the Hersh article. He denounced it as a pack of lies to the banker. Awan nodded in agreement and kept silent. It was not his job to ask Noriega about such allegations.

Awan might have drawn his own conclusions, even without the steady flow of cash and checks into Noriega's account. In March of 1986, the corpse of Cesar Rodriguez, Noriega's long-time confidant and business partner, had been found by police in Medellin. With him was Ruben Paredes, one of the sons of Noriega's predecessor as military chief. The newspapers were awash with stories that they had been killed during a drug deal. There had been other rumors, too-that Noriega was paid off by the drug traffickers to protect them, that the CIA and the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency paid him for information.

Evidence of this activity was plentiful in the transactions connected with Noriega's secret account at the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Despite monthly expenses running into tens of thousands of dollars for Noriega's personal excesses, the account balance was always healthy, usually hovering around $20 million or so. Rinds to replenish it came from a variety of sources. Although Noriega made use of many of Panama's 140 banks, a portion of the protection money he was paid by the Medellin cartel found its way into Noriega's account at BCCI, often dropped off by one of Noriega's close military aides, such as Colonel Luis del Cid. And some of the money that made its way into the account was from the Central Intelligence Agency. The agency, which had had Noriega on its payroll since the early 1970s, later would acknowledge paying him about $200,000. The general would claim he received far more.

It was the ultimate manager's ledger account at BCCI, and Amjad Awan maintained strict personal responsibility for it. He alone had seen the pattern of transactions for years. The notion that this was an intelligence account set up by Noriega for the Panamanian Defense Forces was ludicrous. Awan was too smart not to draw some chilling conclusions about where his patron got his funds, but his job, as he and BCCI defined it, was not to ask questions.

Through the eighties, the general's personal fortune grew substantial ly and his accounts with BCCI were consolidated in London. Awan played a key role in setting up this more sophisticated financial network for Noriega. Awan had arranged for Noriega to buy a chateau in France, a favorite hideaway for Noriega's assets. And $500,000 worth of checks from Noriega's BCCI accounts were passed through First American Bank in Washington, where Awan used office space assigned to the BCCI representative office.

Monthly, and more often if the need arose, Awan would fly to Panama. He would go over the monthly charges on the account, ticking off the credit card bills from the shopping trips taken by Noriega's wife, Felicidad, and their three daughters, listing the hotel and limousine services.

In January 1987, Noriega, his wife, and several associates ran up a bill of $4,764 to Elegant Limousine Service in Los Angeles. Later that same month, the Noriegas and their friends spent $10,359 at the Helmsley Palace in New York and $2,623 on stretch limousines from Manhattan Limousine Ltd. A month later, they were back and the hotel bill was $9,788 and the limos cost $1,279.

In May 1987, there was $30,000 worth of tickets for the Noriegas and associates for a trip that began in San Francisco and wound through Taiwan, Tokyo, and Honolulu before winding up in Los Angeles.

On May 22, Awan submitted a handwritten voucher to Noriega listing $149,010.53 in expenses for the year so far.

Amjad Awan and BCCI were always ready to help a customer. Late in 1986, Awan received a telephone call at his house from Eric Arturo Delvalle, the president of Panama. Noriega had given him the banker's name. The government was trying to sell a tropical island called Contadora. Delvalle wondered whether Awan might have any customers or investors who would be interested.

Contadora was rich in modern history. It had been developed as a private resort, with the government of Panama providing most of the financing under General Omar Torrijos. It had been the site of the negotiations over the Panama Canal Treaty in 1979. At one stage in his gilded, short-lived exile, the Shah of Iran had stayed there. In return for providing a haven for the Shah, the U.S. State Department had quashed a gun-running indictment in Miami against a Panamanian crony of Noriega's. Yet Noriega hated the island because of the connection to Torrijos and the fact that its owner, businessman Gabriel Lewis, was one of Noriega's chief political opponents.

When the resort failed in 1984, Noriega took control of the facilities and installed Cesar Rodriguez as its manager. Despite Rodriguez's lavish efforts, which included flying in entertainers from the United States, the resort failed. For a time, while it was under Rodriguez's control, its airstrip had been used for drug smuggling. Then Lewis announced that the island was being sold to a Japanese businessman who would develop it and sell shares in the development company to island residents. Noriega was determined to undermine the sale by bringing in his own buyer.

After Delvalle's call, Awan consulted colleagues in London about potential buyers. The name that came up was Ghaith Pharaon, the wealthy Saudi Arabian who had acquired the National Bank of Georgia from Bert Lance nearly a decade before.

Pharaon had sold his stock in BCCI earlier in 1986, but it went to his brother, Wabel, and Pharaon retained close ties to the bank and its founder, Agha Hasan Abedi. Just the year before, he had bought another American bank, Independence Bank, in a deal spotted by BCCI bankers and arranged and financed by Abedi.

Independence Bank was a medium-sized bank in Encino, California, a community near Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley. In November 1984, a team of BCCI employees who had traveled to California learned that the bank was for sale. They wrote a letter to Abedi that said "acquiring Independence Bank will give us much required 'freedom' for our future growth and progress in this part of the world."

On April 30, 1985, Pharaon bought it for $23 million. His application to the Federal Reserve Board said he was putting up $8.5 million of his own money and borrowing the remaining $14.5 million.

By 1985, however, the building boom had stopped in Saudi Arabia and Pharaon's own finances were deteriorating. His primary company, Interdec, was restructuring loans with its bankers around the world. When he had trouble getting the $14.5 million loan, he turned to BCCI. The lender, Bank of Boston, accepted a letter of credit guaranteeing a portion of the money. The letter of credit came from Banque Arabe et Internationale d'Investissement in Paris, which was run by Abedi crony Yves Lamarche, one of several Bank of America executives who had remained associated with BCCI after the American bank pulled out of its partnership in the late 1970s. BAlI was the same institution that had loaned $50 million to the Arabs who bought First American Bank in 1982. That transaction, too, had been orchestrated by Abedi and his top associates at BCCI.

Not until much later would federal banking regulators contend that the $8.5 million down payment was a loan to Pharaon from BCCI and that BCCI had arranged the letter of credit and guaranteed the Paris bank that it would be reimbursed for any losses.

Once Pharaon acquired control, a former BCCI executive, Kemal Shoaib, was installed as president of Independence Bank, and the institution embarked on an ambitious growth program that would triple its assets to $600 million and put the bank on the road to financial problems.

So it was logical that Awan would be directed to Pharaon when BCCI needed a potential investor to help out a major client. The Saudi entered into some preliminary talks with the Panamanian government. He said he planned to turn the island into another Club Med location, the resort chain in which Pharaon held a substantial amount of stock.

For his part, Noriega used the talks with Pharaon to ruin the proposed sale to the Japanese businessman by Lewis. He announced that he had arranged for an Arab investor to acquire Contadora. Not long after that, Pharaon pulled out of the deal. Noriega proceeded with the sale to the Japanese company, but he cut Gabriel Lewis out of the deal.

Hitching his star to Noriega had put Amjad Awan's career back on track at BCCI. Near the middle of 1987, the bank was ready to reward him. They decided to transfer him to an executive slot in the New York office. Promotion or not, Awan had spent enough time in New York to know that he did not want to live there. He felt it was no place for his family. He tried to convince Abdur Razzak Sakhia, who would be his boss in New York, to cancel the transfer. However, Sakhia felt that Awan was simply trying to avoid coming under his strict leadership.

"Awan was a very free-spirited person, a very independent person, recalled Sakhia. "I was known as a conservative, tough administrator, so he wouldn't go to work under that discipline."

After failing to persuade Sakhia not to move him, Awan went to Agha Sahib, telephoning Abedi in London.

"Sir, I'm not the fellow for this position," he said to the bank president.

"Where do you want to go?" Abedi asked.

"I'd take Zimbabwe. I'd take Zambia. But not New York," said Awan.

"Well, how's Miami?" asked Abedi.

"Perfect. I can handle it."

So Awan was appointed head of marketing for the bank's hottest growth area, which was called the Latin American and Caribbean Region Office. Known within the bank as LACRO, it was based in Miami and covered BCCI's operations from Tampa to Argentina. The office did not handle regular banking transactions. It was billed as an administrative and marketing operation for the region. Its main function, however, was implementing BCCI's signature EMP program-moving cash deposits out of developing countries and into more hospitable tax and political environments.