BCCI — losers weepers
THIS was the week when the affair of the Bank of Credit and Commerce Interna- tional began to slide into farce. In New York, the district attorney conjured head- lines from the fraud of the century, and indicated a number of people who are outside his country's jurisdiction and will never be brought to its courts. It made a good press conference, though. In Lon- don, the High Court stopped the Bank of England from arranging compensation for the losers. The deposit protection scheme covers three quarters of their losses up to £15,000 a head — but cannot pay out until the court makes an order for the defaulting bank to be wound up. So the Bank of England went to court and asked for the order. The judge refused it. He preferred to wait for four months and see what BCCI's chief shareholder, Sheikh Zayed, could come up with. The sheikh's plan includes compensation, on a scale one- third the size of the official scheme's. He would then become the scheme's largest potential creditor, and could recover the cost of his compensation from it. Luckless and gormless depositors in his bank who count this as a victory should go home and read the small print. Snubbed by the courts on its errand of mercy, charged (sometimes by the same people) with acting too slowly or too quickly, the Bank of England continues to be voted the most popular receptacle for blame. I thought that one paper's leader-writer went too far when he,' or perhaps his compositors, contrived to attack the Bank for failing to supervise the finances of BBC1.
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