It was during the
BCCI scandal that senior executives of the bank actually gave a name to this network. They referred to it as the "
black network", and made sure not to elaborate too much on it. The influence of this "
black network" turned out to be so pervasive that even the official investigators of the scandal suspected they had been put under surveillance by this network, which was described as a "a global intelligence operation [with] a Mafia-like enforcement squad". [32] Only a handful of reporters ever reported on this black network. Among the exceptions was Jack R. Payton, editor of the St. Petersburg Times, who in October 1992 wrote:
"Well I've just finished slogging through a 794-page government report on the scandal, and believe me it's even worse than I thought. Much worse...
"Consider, for a moment, what it might mean to have an organization around that could pull off the following: Manipulate the Central Intelligence Agency and the spy agencies of Britain, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China, Syria, Israel and who knows how many others all at the same time...; Help Pakistan buy nuclear technology on the international black market...;
Launder drug money for the Medellin cocaine cartel in Colombia; Bankroll Abu Nidal, the most notorious terrorist in the world; Handle Manuel Noriega's finances in Panama; Procure prostitutes, some of them children, for traveling Middle Eastern potentates; Rig international commodity markets so that a few insiders could make hundreds of millions of dollars in a single day; Intimidate potential opponents to the point that they feared for their lives. There's a lot more, but you get the idea...
"This is scary enough as it is. The reason we may never know is that as thorough as the Senate investigation may have been, it didn't have access to reams of information that could shed more light on BCCI. The CIA has several hundred reports on BCCI but allowed the subcommittee to look at only three of them. British authorities also have a stockpile of information on BCCI they won't make available because it was classified by British intelligence, MI-5...
"But despite the years of investigation, the arrests and confiscations, even the Senate subcommittee had to admit that we may never know the full extent of
BCCI's crimes, how many top politicians it bribed or if it really had a so-called "black network'' of assassins who would eliminate anyone who got in its way.
"Even so, what we do know about
BCCI is mind-boggling. It's also incredibly complicated - as the Senate subcommittee itself admits, almost beyond comprehension." [33]
A few years after the reports on this
black network, the Comuele scandal in Belgian broke out. After an elaborate investigation, gendarmerie investigators working on the ATLAS dossier, wrote:
"To comprehend this nebula, it is necessary to abandon traditional financial or political logic; this is not merely a question of nation, political party, or of ordinary economics.
"Our conclusion would be that at least over the last twenty years, the economic powers, some of which mafia types, have allied themselves with political forces and organized criminal structures, and reached the 4th stage of money laundering, namely,
Absolute Power.
"It has been specified to us that at the present moment these characters
control 50% of the world economy. ...
"One should not lose sight of the fact that this nebula would control the majority of the financial traffic, as well as the highest political leaders, worldwide.
"This same structure could, if it wanted, put pressure on the most important cities of this world, controlling in each one almost everything (energy, communications, provisioning of water, environment....) ... in order to impose itself, its strategy has been to use corruption, and has done so for many years."
http://www.isgp.eu/dutroux_and_nebul...Nebula.htm#Die