#Iraqgate

8 entries

People (3)

Christopher Drogoul Manager of the Atlanta branch of Banca Nazionale del Lavoro who extended more than four billion dollars in unreported credit to Iraq and testified that his superiors in Rome and Kissinger Associates knew of the business.
Frederick Lacey New Jersey prosecutor and federal judge, one of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court's first judges, whom William Barr named in 1992 to review the BNL-Iraq case and who cleared the Justice Department.
Henry B. Gonzalez House Banking Committee chairman who read classified documents on American aid to Iraq into the Congressional Record in 1992 after the Justice Department asked him to stop his inquiry on national security grounds.

House Banking Committee House committee created in 1865 as Banking and Currency; under Henry Gonzalez it investigated the BNL loans to Iraq over executive-branch resistance, and under Jim Leach the Systematics allegations.
Kissinger Associates New York consulting firm founded by Henry Kissinger in 1982 whose officers Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger advised Banca Nazionale del Lavoro before returning to government during the bank's unreported lending to Iraq.
Matrix Churchill British machine tool maker bought in 1987 by an Iraqi military procurement front, financed by the Atlanta branch of Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, whose directors' 1992 trial collapsed and led to the Scott Inquiry.
Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization Iraqi ministry under Saddam Hussein's son-in-law Hussein Kamel, from 1988 in charge of weapons industrialization, which bought Western technology through the Al-Arabi front network with BNL-Atlanta loans.

BNL Scandal Discovery in 1989 that the Atlanta branch of Italy's Banca Nazionale del Lavoro had lent Iraq five billion dollars off its books, and a prosecution that Congress and the trial judge said shielded higher officials.