Nugan Hand Bank
Encyclopedia
Nugan Hand Bank was an Australia
n merchant bank
that
collapsed in 1980 in sensational circumstances amidst rumours of involvement by the Central Intelligence Agency
and organized crime
.
in 1973 by Australian lawyer Francis John "Frank" Nugan (who was reputedly associated with the Mafia in Griffith, New South Wales
) and former U.S. Green Beret
Michael Jon "Mike" Hand who had experience in the Vietnam War
(after which he began training Hmong
guerillas in Northern Laos
under CIA aegis, an experience alleged to account for his ties to the "Golden Triangle
" heroin trade). It has been alleged that the two generally split the business: Nugan took care of tax fraud and money-laundering, while Hand managed the drug money and the international branches.
The Nugan Hand Bank attracted investors with promises of up to 16% interest rates on their deposits and assurances of anonymity, tax-free accounts, specialist investment assistance, along with more surreptitious services such as money laundering
(charging a mere 22% fee). Nugan Hand rapidly gained business and expanded its offices from a single Sydney office to a global network that included branches (registered in the Cayman Islands
) in Chiang Mai
, Manila
, Hawaii
, Cape Town
, Hong Kong
, Taiwan
, Cayman Islands
and Washington D.C..
The Nugan Hand Bank gained respectability by the recruitment of a number of retired senior U.S. military and intelligence personnel, such as former Rear Admiral
Earl "Buddy" Yates as bank president and ex-CIA head
William Colby
as legal counsel.
Australian trucking magnate Peter Abeles
was also connected with the bank.
s were prevented from asking questions by the bank. These concerns turned into panic for bank investors in the early hours of 27 January 1980 when Nugan (who was facing charges of stock fraud) was found shot dead by a .30-calibre rifle in his Mercedes-Benz
outside Lithgow, New South Wales
. It is said that a hand-written list was found on his body with a list of substantial loans Nugan Hand had extended to various notables, such as William Colby and Bob Wilson
. The following police investigation returned a verdict of suicide. Suspicions of the bank's activities grew in subsequent days as details emerged of the contents of Nugan's car (including the business card of William Colby) and news that Nugan's house and office had been ransacked by Hand and Yates and important company files destroyed or stolen.
The official inquest into Nugan's death in June 1980 made front-page news amid testimony from Hand that Nugan Hand was insolvent, owing at least A$50 million (and as much as hundreds of millions), including $20,000 rent on their Sydney headquarters.
Hand shredded many of Nugan Hand's remaining records from both the office and the home of Nugan. He then fled Australia under a false identity, that of a Sydney butcher named Alan Glenn Winter, on a flight to Fiji
in late June 1981. Hand wore a false beard and mustache to look like Winter and obtained a passport after getting Winter's birth certificate and having two photos taken. After a week in Fiji he made his way to Vancouver, British Columbia, and then on to New York City.
Hand has not been seen since. It is possible that, as a CIA operative, after he re-entered the United States and was given a new identity.
In April 1983 a Perth businessman, Murray Quartermaine, testified to the Stewart Royal Commision on drugs that Hand was living in Pretoria
, South Africa
under the name of Hahn. Quartermaine's former business partner Christo Moll had been linked to the bank, and Quartermaine had won a AU$400,000 judgment against Moll. Quartermaine also told The Age
that he had evidence that questioned that Nugan's death was a suicide.
A subsequent royal commission
inquiring into the activities of the Nugan Hand Group revealed money-laundering, arms shipments, drug dealing, theft (including US$5 million from US military personnel in Saudi Arabia
) and large-scale tax avoidance by Nugan Hand throughout its brief but eventful existence. One witness, a former Nugan Hand director, stated that Hand threatened bank executives: "If we didn't do what we were told, and things weren't handled properly, our wives would be cut into pieces and put in boxes and sent back to us".
An Australian investigation, the 'Joint Task Force on Drug Trafficking', compiled a report on the Nugan Hand bank in 1983. It determined that, above and beyond the revelations of the Royal Commission, Nugan Hand had acted as a CIA front
to finance a war in Laos
by laundering drug money. The Nugan Hand Chiang Mai
branch participated in the covert sale of an electronic spy ship to Iran
and weapons shipments to Angola
.
The investigation linked former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos
to the bank. Melbourne and Manila businessman Ludwig Petre Rocka had an account at the bank, as did his wife Elizabeth E. Marcos, sister of Ferdinand. Rocka had helped set up the Manila branch of Nugan Hand and had his Manila office (International Development & Planning Corporation) in the same office as the bank. Author Jonathan Kwitny
states that the evidence implies that Ferdinand Marcos was removing money from the Philippines, some of which was in gold, through Nugan Hand, and that a portion of this money, a "commission", was then used to fund CIA activity, like that in Laos.
Authors Alfred W. McCoy
(in The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade), as well as Sterling and Peggy Seagrave (in their book Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold) state that Hugan Hand was totally CIA controlled (by Paul Helliwell), and came into formation after Castle Bank & Trust
came under scrutiny and was just the predecessor of Bank of Credit and Commerce International
(BCCI), after Hugan Hand imploded. They further assert that the bank was just small stepping stone for the CIA in laundering capital that started during World War II and continues on.
It has long been a subject of speculation that Nugan Hand had some sort of part to play in Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam
's dismissal
.
Continued speculation that Nugan had faked his own death, including a report from a businessman who said he saw and talked with Nugan while on a trip to the U.S., and was in hiding led authorities to exhume Nugan's body in February 1981. Dental records and fingerprints where used to confirm that the body was Nugan's.
No one connected with Nugan Hand has ever been convicted of a crime. Admiral Yates and his fellow senior officers who were involved with Nugan Hand have not responded to Australian requests to testify about the bank.
Other accounts of Nugan Hand activities and personnel (largely lacking authoritative citations) are available at
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n merchant bank
Merchant bank
A merchant bank is a financial institution which provides capital to companies in the form of share ownership instead of loans. A merchant bank also provides advisory on corporate matters to the firms they lend to....
that
collapsed in 1980 in sensational circumstances amidst rumours of involvement by the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
and organized crime
Organized crime
Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...
.
Founding
Nugan Hand Ltd. was founded in SydneySydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
in 1973 by Australian lawyer Francis John "Frank" Nugan (who was reputedly associated with the Mafia in Griffith, New South Wales
Griffith, New South Wales
Griffith is a city in south-western New South Wales, Australia. It is also the seat of the City of Griffith local government area. Like the Australian capital, Canberra and the nearby town of Leeton, Griffith was designed by Walter Burley Griffin. Griffith was named after Sir Arthur Griffith the...
) and former U.S. Green Beret
United States Army Special Forces
The United States Army Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets because of their distinctive service headgear, are a special operations force tasked with six primary missions: unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, special reconnaissance, direct action, hostage rescue, and...
Michael Jon "Mike" Hand who had experience in the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
(after which he began training Hmong
Hmong people
The Hmong , are an Asian ethnic group from the mountainous regions of China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Hmong are also one of the sub-groups of the Miao ethnicity in southern China...
guerillas in Northern Laos
Laos
Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...
under CIA aegis, an experience alleged to account for his ties to the "Golden Triangle
Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)
The Golden Triangle is one of Asia's two main illicit opium-producing areas. It is an area of around that overlaps the mountains of four countries of Southeast Asia: Burma, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Along with Afghanistan in the Golden Crescent and Pakistan, it has been one of the most...
" heroin trade). It has been alleged that the two generally split the business: Nugan took care of tax fraud and money-laundering, while Hand managed the drug money and the international branches.
The Nugan Hand Bank attracted investors with promises of up to 16% interest rates on their deposits and assurances of anonymity, tax-free accounts, specialist investment assistance, along with more surreptitious services such as money laundering
Money laundering
Money laundering is the process of disguising illegal sources of money so that it looks like it came from legal sources. The methods by which money may be laundered are varied and can range in sophistication. Many regulatory and governmental authorities quote estimates each year for the amount...
(charging a mere 22% fee). Nugan Hand rapidly gained business and expanded its offices from a single Sydney office to a global network that included branches (registered in the Cayman Islands
Cayman Islands
The Cayman Islands is a British Overseas Territory and overseas territory of the European Union located in the western Caribbean Sea. The territory comprises the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman, located south of Cuba and northwest of Jamaica...
) in Chiang Mai
Chiang Mai
Chiang Mai sometimes written as "Chiengmai" or "Chiangmai", is the largest and most culturally significant city in northern Thailand. It is the capital of Chiang Mai Province , a former capital of the Kingdom of Lanna and was the tributary Kingdom of Chiang Mai from 1774 until 1939. It is...
, Manila
Manila
Manila is the capital of the Philippines. It is one of the sixteen cities forming Metro Manila.Manila is located on the eastern shores of Manila Bay and is bordered by Navotas and Caloocan to the north, Quezon City to the northeast, San Juan and Mandaluyong to the east, Makati on the southeast,...
, Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
, Cape Town
Cape Town
Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...
, Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
, Cayman Islands
Cayman Islands
The Cayman Islands is a British Overseas Territory and overseas territory of the European Union located in the western Caribbean Sea. The territory comprises the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman, located south of Cuba and northwest of Jamaica...
and Washington D.C..
The Nugan Hand Bank gained respectability by the recruitment of a number of retired senior U.S. military and intelligence personnel, such as former Rear Admiral
Rear Admiral
Rear admiral is a naval commissioned officer rank above that of a commodore and captain, and below that of a vice admiral. It is generally regarded as the lowest of the "admiral" ranks, which are also sometimes referred to as "flag officers" or "flag ranks"...
Earl "Buddy" Yates as bank president and ex-CIA head
Director of Central Intelligence
The Office of United States Director of Central Intelligence was the head of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, the principal intelligence advisor to the President and the National Security Council, and the coordinator of intelligence activities among and between the various United...
William Colby
William Colby
William Egan Colby spent a career in intelligence for the United States, culminating in holding the post of Director of Central Intelligence from September 1973, to January 1976....
as legal counsel.
Australian trucking magnate Peter Abeles
Peter Abeles
Sir Peter Emil Herbert Abeles, AC was an Australian transportation magnate. A refugee from Hungary, he became one of the most powerful businessmen in Australia, and was knighted in 1972.-Life:...
was also connected with the bank.
Scandal and collapse
Concerns over the bank's questionable accounting processes began to circulate by the late 1970s as investors attending annual general meetingAnnual general meeting
An annual general meeting is a meeting that official bodies, and associations involving the public , are often required by law to hold...
s were prevented from asking questions by the bank. These concerns turned into panic for bank investors in the early hours of 27 January 1980 when Nugan (who was facing charges of stock fraud) was found shot dead by a .30-calibre rifle in his Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz is a German manufacturer of automobiles, buses, coaches, and trucks. Mercedes-Benz is a division of its parent company, Daimler AG...
outside Lithgow, New South Wales
Lithgow, New South Wales
Lithgow is a city in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia and is the centre of the local political division City of Lithgow. It is located in a mountain valley named Lithgow's Valley by John Oxley in honour of William Lithgow, the first Auditor-General of New South Wales.Lithgow is...
. It is said that a hand-written list was found on his body with a list of substantial loans Nugan Hand had extended to various notables, such as William Colby and Bob Wilson
Bob Wilson
Bob Wilson may refer to:*Bob Wilson , played for the 1958 L.A. Dodgers*Bob Wilson , British cartoonist of the Stanley Bagshaw series of children's cartoons...
. The following police investigation returned a verdict of suicide. Suspicions of the bank's activities grew in subsequent days as details emerged of the contents of Nugan's car (including the business card of William Colby) and news that Nugan's house and office had been ransacked by Hand and Yates and important company files destroyed or stolen.
The official inquest into Nugan's death in June 1980 made front-page news amid testimony from Hand that Nugan Hand was insolvent, owing at least A$50 million (and as much as hundreds of millions), including $20,000 rent on their Sydney headquarters.
Hand shredded many of Nugan Hand's remaining records from both the office and the home of Nugan. He then fled Australia under a false identity, that of a Sydney butcher named Alan Glenn Winter, on a flight to Fiji
Fiji
Fiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...
in late June 1981. Hand wore a false beard and mustache to look like Winter and obtained a passport after getting Winter's birth certificate and having two photos taken. After a week in Fiji he made his way to Vancouver, British Columbia, and then on to New York City.
Hand has not been seen since. It is possible that, as a CIA operative, after he re-entered the United States and was given a new identity.
In April 1983 a Perth businessman, Murray Quartermaine, testified to the Stewart Royal Commision on drugs that Hand was living in Pretoria
Pretoria
Pretoria is a city located in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is one of the country's three capital cities, serving as the executive and de facto national capital; the others are Cape Town, the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital.Pretoria is...
, South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
under the name of Hahn. Quartermaine's former business partner Christo Moll had been linked to the bank, and Quartermaine had won a AU$400,000 judgment against Moll. Quartermaine also told The Age
The Age
The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...
that he had evidence that questioned that Nugan's death was a suicide.
A subsequent royal commission
Royal Commission
In Commonwealth realms and other monarchies a Royal Commission is a major ad-hoc formal public inquiry into a defined issue. They have been held in various countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Saudi Arabia...
inquiring into the activities of the Nugan Hand Group revealed money-laundering, arms shipments, drug dealing, theft (including US$5 million from US military personnel in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
) and large-scale tax avoidance by Nugan Hand throughout its brief but eventful existence. One witness, a former Nugan Hand director, stated that Hand threatened bank executives: "If we didn't do what we were told, and things weren't handled properly, our wives would be cut into pieces and put in boxes and sent back to us".
An Australian investigation, the 'Joint Task Force on Drug Trafficking', compiled a report on the Nugan Hand bank in 1983. It determined that, above and beyond the revelations of the Royal Commission, Nugan Hand had acted as a CIA front
CIA Drug Trafficking
A few sources indicate the United States Central Intelligence Agency might have been involved in several drug trafficking operations...
to finance a war in Laos
Laos
Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...
by laundering drug money. The Nugan Hand Chiang Mai
Chiang Mai
Chiang Mai sometimes written as "Chiengmai" or "Chiangmai", is the largest and most culturally significant city in northern Thailand. It is the capital of Chiang Mai Province , a former capital of the Kingdom of Lanna and was the tributary Kingdom of Chiang Mai from 1774 until 1939. It is...
branch participated in the covert sale of an electronic spy ship to Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
and weapons shipments to Angola
Angola
Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...
.
The investigation linked former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos
Ferdinand Marcos
Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos, Sr. was a Filipino leader and an authoritarian President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. He was a lawyer, member of the Philippine House of Representatives and a member of the Philippine Senate...
to the bank. Melbourne and Manila businessman Ludwig Petre Rocka had an account at the bank, as did his wife Elizabeth E. Marcos, sister of Ferdinand. Rocka had helped set up the Manila branch of Nugan Hand and had his Manila office (International Development & Planning Corporation) in the same office as the bank. Author Jonathan Kwitny
Jonathan Kwitny
Jonathan Kwitny was a Jewish American writer and investigative journalist. He received the University of Missouri School of Journalism's honor medal for career achievement. His book jacket biographies record that his reporting forced J...
states that the evidence implies that Ferdinand Marcos was removing money from the Philippines, some of which was in gold, through Nugan Hand, and that a portion of this money, a "commission", was then used to fund CIA activity, like that in Laos.
Authors Alfred W. McCoy
Alfred W. McCoy
Alfred William McCoy is a historian of Southeast Asia. He is the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. McCoy graduated from the Kent School in 1964. He earned his B.A...
(in The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade), as well as Sterling and Peggy Seagrave (in their book Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold) state that Hugan Hand was totally CIA controlled (by Paul Helliwell), and came into formation after Castle Bank & Trust
Castle Bank & Trust (Bahamas)
Castle Bank & Trust was a notorious Bahamian bank that was involved in tax evasion, as well as covertly funneling funds for the Central Intelligence Agency...
came under scrutiny and was just the predecessor of Bank of Credit and Commerce International
Bank of Credit and Commerce International
The Bank of Credit and Commerce International was a major international bank founded in 1972 by Agha Hasan Abedi, a Pakistani financier. The Bank was registered in Luxembourg with head offices in Karachi and London. Within a decade BCCI touched its peak...
(BCCI), after Hugan Hand imploded. They further assert that the bank was just small stepping stone for the CIA in laundering capital that started during World War II and continues on.
It has long been a subject of speculation that Nugan Hand had some sort of part to play in Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam
Gough Whitlam
Edward Gough Whitlam, AC, QC , known as Gough Whitlam , served as the 21st Prime Minister of Australia. Whitlam led the Australian Labor Party to power at the 1972 election and retained government at the 1974 election, before being dismissed by Governor-General Sir John Kerr at the climax of the...
's dismissal
Australian constitutional crisis of 1975
The 1975 Australian constitutional crisis has been described as the greatest political crisis and constitutional crisis in Australia's history. It culminated on 11 November 1975 with the removal of the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam of the Australian Labor Party , by Governor-General Sir John Kerr...
.
Continued speculation that Nugan had faked his own death, including a report from a businessman who said he saw and talked with Nugan while on a trip to the U.S., and was in hiding led authorities to exhume Nugan's body in February 1981. Dental records and fingerprints where used to confirm that the body was Nugan's.
No one connected with Nugan Hand has ever been convicted of a crime. Admiral Yates and his fellow senior officers who were involved with Nugan Hand have not responded to Australian requests to testify about the bank.
External links
- Alfred McCoy interview
Other accounts of Nugan Hand activities and personnel (largely lacking authoritative citations) are available at
- Anonymous message at APFN website
- Anonymous message at APFN website
- Nugan Hand Bank article at UK website Spartacus Educational
- Nugan Hand Bank article on WikiMir
- Heavy Allies by Wayne Grogan (2008, Brandl and Schlesinger). A fictionalised account of the Nugan Hand events, set against a backdrop of hitmen, drug dealers and the Vietnam War.