Can you please tell this GenXer about BCCI? Thanks...
To put the known and generally accepted facts into a very small nutshell, BCCI was the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, based in the Middle East and with branches all over the place (I have at least one 1990s era map of Tokyo that shows its branch office there). It was a criminal enterprise, a fraudulent institution (to say the least) that was finally confronted by the British, if memory serves. Google searches indicate that it was founded in the early 1970s, which sounds about right.
Going over some very old memories (aided by Google, which unfortunately may influence when I seem to remember what -- a lot of information about this institution came out over a long period of time), I believe the first time that I remember hearing anything about its ways was back with Bert Lance, a prominent member of President Carter's administration and a Georgia banker of some note, and around some unsavory loans around the Carter administration.
As memory has it (and Google), this bank was about as dirty as you can get: it used Ponzi accounting, it outright stole money from depositors, it was involved in the drug trade, political corruption, and just about every other bad thing imaginable. President Carter evidently associated himself with at least some of these people; there was talk that there was a loan to save his peanut operation, though I believe that that was long argued as to exactly BCCI's role (if any) in that, and it may well have been that that was just Saudi money. (I think it is generally accepted that there was a bridge loan from the Middle East to cover his operation while waiting on a peanut crop to come in, but I could be wrong about that -- it's hard to sort out the conspiracy theories from the facts from the old memories on all of this.)
Knowing Free Republic, I am sure that there are people with very detailed information about this subject instead of my maundering and meandering memories of one of our worst President's embarrassing shenanigans. Let's just say that I don't discount these new allegations, although I would like to see another source other than WorldNet on this one.