Former Central Intelligence Agency Director Richard Helms aided a failed attempt to take over the First American Bank of Washington on behalf of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, according to a published report Saturday.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said court records in Atlanta show Helms assisted Iranian millionaire Rahim Irvani, who served as chairman of an off-shore company created in 1978, to hide BCCI's role in the takeover of the Washington Bank.The copyrighted story said U.S. Senate investigators are examining dealings between Helms and Irvani that it said raise questions about the CIA's knowledge of BCCI's evolution into a criminal organization.
"There was nothing at all improper about the CIA's relations with BCCI," CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield told Reuters in response to the newspaper story.
"We have provided policymakers and law enforcement agencies with numerous reports about the bank's activities over the years."
Helms, who was no longer with the CIA when he allegedly helped Irvani, was not available for comment.
The Atlanta newspaper said longtime business relationships between Helms, Irvani and Roy Carlson, former head of the Atlanta-based National Bank of Georgia, emerged in depositions, cables and legal records filed in connection with a protracted lawsuit in suburban Gwinnett County, Georgia, between Irvani and the German firm G+H Montage GmbH.
In that suit, the paper said, the German firm has sought to trace Irvani's assets through a "maze of offshore companies."
It said court documents show that Helms, U.S. ambassador to Iran under President Jimmy Carter and CIA chief from 1966-72, vouched for Irvani "at the highest levels of the U.S. government."
The documents show that Helms wrote letters to "introduce him to President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker as a man of `substance and decency,' " the paper said.
It said Helms declined through a spokeswoman to comment on his relationship with Irvani and Carlson, who once managed Irvani's interests in Iran and later was a vice president of Helms' consulting firm. Efforts to reach Irvani and Carlson were not successful, the paper said.
It said the court records reveal an effort to gain control of the Washington bank on behalf of BCCI shortly after the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil complaint accusing BCCI and Agha Hasan Abedi of violating federal law with a secret effort to take over the bank.