<P> The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was an international bank founded in 1972 by Agha Hasan Abedi, a Pakistani financier . The Bank was registered in Luxembourg with head offices in Karachi and London . A decade after opening, BCCI had over 400 branches in 78 countries, and assets in excess of US $20 billion, making it the 7th largest private bank in the world . </P> <P> BCCI came under the scrutiny of numerous financial regulators and intelligence agencies in the 1980s due to concerns that it was poorly regulated . Subsequent investigations revealed that it was involved in massive money laundering and other financial crimes, and illegally gained the controlling interest in a major American bank . BCCI became the focus of a massive regulatory battle in 1991, and, on 5 July of that year, customs and bank regulators in seven countries raided and locked down records of its branch offices . </P> <P> Investigators in the US and the UK revealed that BCCI had been "set up deliberately to avoid centralized regulatory review, and operated extensively in bank secrecy jurisdictions . Its affairs were extraordinarily complex . Its officers were sophisticated international bankers whose apparent objective was to keep their affairs secret, to commit fraud on a massive scale, and to avoid detection ." </P> <P> The liquidators, Deloitte & Touche, filed a lawsuit against the bank's auditors, Price Waterhouse and Ernst & Young, which was settled for $175 million in 1998 . By 2013, Deloitte & Touche claimed to have recovered about 75% of the creditors' lost money . </P>

Bank of credit and commerce international case study