The Underworld's Bank of Choice

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THE story of the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) is at once a great true crime tale and an ominous reflection on the times. It's a story worth knowing because, as New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau remarked, his 1991 indictment of BCCI exposed "the largest bank fraud in world financial history." If that weren't enough, the millions of dollars BCCI's depositors lost through the bank's misdeeds symbolize the even greater crisis of global banking and the difficulties facing law enforcement in a world economy.

The bizarre charlatans who ran BCCI for two decades now seem like so much flotsam on international tides of capital and crime, but they …