Bcci And Its Accountants 10

BCCI AND ITS ACCOUNTANTS

Introduction External auditors of banks everywhere play a critical role in the self-regulatory process by which both ordinary depositors as well as players in the financial marketplace evaluate their own business performance, and that of those with whom they may place their savings or do business. In addition, in many foreign jurisdictions, external auditors of banks are relied upon by regulators to provide them with important internal information about bank practices, performing the kind of function in those countries that federal bank examiners do in the United States. In the case of BCCI, there can be no question that the auditing process failed to work. As the Bank of England stated in determining that BCCI be closed: It appears from the Price Waterhouse Report [of June 1991] that the accounting records [of BCCI] have completely failed and continue to fail to meet the standard required of institutions authorised under the Banking Act. It further appears that there is not [a] proper or adequate system of controls for managing the business of BCCI.(1)

Given the demonstrable failure of the auditing process, serious questions have been raised about how and why BCCI's outside auditors permitted BCCI to flourish as long as it did, despite fraud and other bad practices which went back many years. The record offers both support for assessing blame on BCCI's auditors, and the suggestion that their work in the spring of 1991 was an essential component of the investigative process that ultimately forced BCCI's closure. One view of the culpability of BCCI's accountants was expressed by BCCI's own chief financial officer, Masihur Rahman. Rahman testified that as BCCI's top financial official, he did not know of BCCI's frauds prior to the spring of 1990. He testified that has the bank's chief financial officer in London, he did not have access to any of the underlying loan information and related files at BCCI's various field offices. Rahman testified that he therefore relied on the work of the outside auditors, operating around the world at the local level, to review BCCI's records at its various offices and branches, and thereby ensure their truth and accuracy. At the other extreme was the position taken by BCCI's principal auditor, Price Waterhouse (UK), that it was completely deceived by BCCI until the spring of 1990, and handled its responsibilities concerning BCCI without any fault whatsoever. As Masihur Rahman expressed his position, regarding the auditors' handling of BCCI's first set of major losses in 1985:

I used to tell the Price Waterhouse and Ernst & Whinney to please review these reports and also please keep me informed, because you are more my eyes and ears than my own inspection division . . .[if] Price Waterhouse had been doing its job, there's no way that this $1 billion exposure [in BCCI's Central Treasury] which was taken to $11 billion exposure in the course of 3 or 4 months [in 1985] could have happened.(2) According to Rahman, Price Waterhouse (UK) had signed off on BCCI practices year after year without issuing any red flags, until suddenly, in April, 1990, it found massive deficiencies at the bank, in which, as Senator Kerry put it, "every red flag in the world was flying," raising the question of how Price Waterhouse could have missed all of BCCI's bad practices previously.(3) From Rahman's point of view, local auditors at each of BCCI's locations had the opportunity to review the underlying loan documentation from the beginning. Rahman believed that process of review was precisely what they had been hired to do and failed at. From his point of view, as chief financial officer, his job was to accept the numbers provided him and audited locally the accountants, and from there to put together the overall financial accounts of BCCI. Thus, the deceptions that took place were made possible through the auditors' failure to have looked sufficiently closely at BCCI's customer-by-customer financial records around the world, and especially in the Grand Caymans. As Rahman explained in an annotation to the report prepared by Price Waterhouse to the Bank of England in June, 1991

which helped bring about the closure of BCCI globally: