Complicity of intelligence services in illegal activities

It has been alleged that the intelligence community's involvement with the BCCI bank account in large part for the dilatory behaviour of regulators in their initial probing of the case. Similar patterns are evident in the case of the Nugan Hand bank in Australia, which collapsed in 1980. The Castle Bank, used by the CIA to finance its operations in Cuba, is another example. Typically such banks hold accounts of both celebrities and personalities from organized crime. The BBCI scandal drew attention to the way in which the presidency of the USA, acting in the name of national security, gave its secret services a free-wheeling licence to operate with scant regard for law and morality. As a result of the Irangate inquiry 5 senior CIA officials in the 1980s were under scrutiny by the special prosecutor and 2 were likely to face criminal charges.