Khalid Salim bin Mahfouz was born December 26, 1949, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. His father, Salem bin Mahfouz, was a Yemeni-born money-changer who founded the [[National Commercial Bank]] (NCB), the first and largest private bank in Saudi Arabia. Khalid succeeded his father in management of NCB and by the 1990s personally held a 75% stake in the institution, with his wife Naela Kaaki holding the remaining 25%. In 1999, following the collapse of [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International|BCCI]], the Saudi government purchased a controlling 50% stake in NCB for at least $1 billion -- partly used to retire Khalid's personal debts -- after which the Mahfouz family retained a 34% stake but Khalid surrendered all management positions. Khalid bin Mahfouz died August 16, 2009, in Jeddah.[^1] ### BCCI Ownership and Fraud Bin Mahfouz personally owned approximately 20% of [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International|BCCI]]. Between 1986 and 1988, according to the 1992 Manhattan grand jury indictment, he invested more than $700 million in BCCI and separately invested $140 million in Credit and Commerce American Holdings, the vehicle that secretly owned [[First American Bank]] in Washington, D.C., before selling both sets of shares. The fraud: at least $300 million of the payments Mahfouz received for those shares came from BCCI's own funds, recorded on BCCI's books as fictitious loans and falsely confirmed to auditors as performing assets. As a result, BCCI's auditors and regulators were deceived into believing Mahfouz remained a major shareholder through at least April 1990, lending the institution a false appearance of solvency.[^1][^2] ### Indictment and Settlement On July 1, 1992, Manhattan District Attorney [[Robert Morgenthau]] presented a New York state grand jury indictment naming bin Mahfouz and his associate Haroon Kahlon on charges of defrauding BCCI depositors and investors of $300 million and abetting a conspiracy by top BCCI officers to conceal the bank's true ownership and financial condition from regulators. Bin Mahfouz resigned as NCB chairman on or around July 8, 1992, to contest the charges. The Federal Reserve simultaneously moved against NCB's New York branch on grounds that Mahfouz had misled American regulators.[^2] On December 23, 1993, bin Mahfouz agreed to pay $225 million to resolve all federal and New York state charges. The distribution was: $35 million to the U.S. Treasury, $1 million to New York State, $1 million to New York City, and $188 million to the BCCI settlement fund, bringing total BCCI-related recoveries to approximately $880 million. In exchange, Morgenthau's office and the Federal Reserve Board dropped all civil and criminal charges. Bin Mahfouz admitted no criminal guilt.[^2] ### PROMIS Connection A document dated May 14, 1985, on [[Department of Justice]] letterhead and signed by [[William Bradford Reynolds]], Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, set out a covert plan to distribute espionage-modified [[PROMIS]] software in the Middle East. The letter states: "As agreed, Messrs. [[Manucher Ghorbanifar]], [[Adnan Khashoggi]], and [[Richard Armitage]] will broker the transaction of the PROMISE software to Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz for resale and general distribution as gifts in his region." The letter specified that the software must be "equipped with the special retrieval unit" and that "no paper work, customs, or delay" was to accompany the transfer, with all payments to be routed through accounts at Credit Suisse and [[National Commercial Bank]]. Reynolds authenticated the letter in 2005 interviews with INSLAW investigators, stating he had signed it at the request of personnel in Deputy Attorney General [[Lowell Jensen]]'s office while [[Edwin Meese]] was recused from all PROMIS-related matters.[^3][^4] The document placed bin Mahfouz alongside Ghorbanifar and Khashoggi -- both of whom were simultaneously central to the arms-for-hostages pipeline that became the [[Iran-Contra Affair]] -- in a network brokering intelligence-modified software to the Middle East. ### Footnotes [^1]: Beaty, Jonathan, and S.C. Gwynne. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI.* Random House, 1993. [^2]: "Saudi to Pay $225 Million in BCCI Settlement." *The Washington Post*, December 24, 1993; "Top Saudi Banker Indicted in BCCI Fraud." United Press International, July 1, 1992. [^3]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary. *The INSLAW Affair: Investigative Report.* House Report 102-857, 102nd Congress, 2nd Session, September 10, 1992. [^4]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal.* TrineDay, 2010.