Business Notes: Banking

Investigators probing the B.C.C.I. banking scandal got an unexpected break last week when FBI agents snared Sani Ahmad, the former head of the bank's Washington office. Ahmad, who fled to Pakistan after authorities sought him for questioning in 1990, had sneaked back into the U.S. to sell his house and is now being held without bail as a material witness. He is currently being interrogated by the Justice Department and New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau's B.C.C.I. team.

"Mr. Ahmad's duties as head of B.C.C.I.'s Washington office included the bribery of certain government officials," an unnamed informant is quoted as saying in an FBI affidavit. This informant identified Ahmad as B.C.C.I.'s coordinator for "certain types of industrial espionage" including the "giving and receiving of commercial bribes." No charges have been filed against Ahmad, but a former bank official told TIME, as well as investigators for two grand juries, that Ahmad was connected to the bank's "black network" of operatives who used bribery, blackmail and sometimes terrorism to further the bank's schemes in 73 countries.