face. As myoid boss when I joined the discout market - who had worked as a "bond-salesman" on Wall Street during the "Great Crash" of 1929, through the Credit Anstalt crash, and served in British military intelligence during the Second World War - always used to say: "Remember! The telephone is not a secure instrument. " During the 1960s, foreign banks had flooded into London in pursuit of Eurodollar deposits. Arabs were spending their new found oil wealth in West End casinos. Ex change Control regulations were tight. In 1971, when our story begins, new "banks" on the fringe took advantage of the property boom, fuelled by Tory Chancellor Barber's first Budget. The discount houses (whose functions and special privileges at the Bank were soon arcane) became active traders in US dollar and foreign currency paper, and took stakes in the new money brokers (or "barrow boys," as the snobs called them, since the sharpest brokers were mainly Cockney Eastenders). While the "gentleman's club" was quickly being replaced by the fast growing "interbank swaps" market (now LIFFE), the discount houses had found a new role to pla- opening representative offices overseas (Gillett Brothers, where I was then chairman, in Southern Africa, UAE, Australia and Singapore, with brokering subsidiaries in Europe, Far East, and North America) - gathering market intelligence around the world, as the invisible "eyes and ears" of the Bank of England.

Before Enron, before Arthur Anderson, and before Worldcom, there was the Bank of New York money laundering scandal, which hit headlines in 1999. Promising to be one of the most important books on international organized crime, money laundering, and the complicity between legitimate and illegitimate businesses in both the United States and the former Soviet Union, among other places, during the last decade of the 20th century, All Is Clouded by Desire examines the criminal dealings that led to the revelation that the Bank of New York's Eastern European Division laundered $6 billion for Russian organized criminals and other shady organizations and individuals. In a series of intrigues that involved crooked Geneva banker Bruce Rappaport and high-level members of the Bank of New York, criminal Russian organizations were able to thrive and prosper during a time when the rest of the former Soviet Union crumbled amidst growing corruption and a declining economy. Tracing the financial shenanigans back many years, Block and Weaver illustrate how the underworld of high finance, money laundering, mafia groups, CIA operatives, and legitimate banking institutions can clean dirty money and operate criminal enterprises that span the globe. Block and Weaver carefully assemble a vivid examination of the world of hot money in the arena of international banking and the roles played by Intelligence, the politically connected, and the criminally inclined. Focusing on the intensely private Genava banker Bruce Rappaport and the Bank of New York, the authors show how the two worked together with dodgy Russian banks to move and launder billions through channels that include off-shore banks, shady joint-ventures, and outright criminal organizations. Relying on primary sources from the logs of the institutions involved, interviews with British Intelligence operatives and former CIA officers, secret discussions with private detectives handling the infamous Marc Rich tax case, and material collected by two private detective agencies in London and New York, the book exposes the various machinations that were instrumental in completing the financial schemes that would ultimately cause the downfall of two top Bank of New York executives.

From the two Time correspondents who cracked the story, the definitive book on the Bank of Credit and Commerce International: an explosive, fast-paced expose of one of the largest criminal conspiracies in history. Beaty and Gwynne's riveting first-person account not only puts all the pieces together for the first time, but brings to life the cloak-and-dagger intrigue that surrounded their investigation. 16 pages of photos.

This book exposesrms deals, peddling influences, bribing politicians, defrauding depositors, sponsoring spies--and how it collapsed like a house of cards. Dirty Money is packed with as much espionage and intrigue as a Ken Follett novel. 25 pho tographs.

Its nickname was the Bank of Crooks and Criminals, but BCCI was much more than just a dirty bank. Started by a shadowy group of Pakistani financiers and Arab sheiks, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International quickly became a global criminal organization. Now two award-winning journalists who have tracked BCCI for a decade reveal how these wolves escaped prosecution for so long and detail the roles of Jimmy Carter, William Casey, and members of the Bush administration and family. 8 pages of photos.