The Ties That Blind

...Beneficiaries have included former House Ways and Means chairman Dan Rostenkowski, Senate Republican leader Robert Dole, and former Senate majority leader Robert Byrd...

...As late as 1988, a senior BCCI officer recommended Capcom and Akbar to a client, who turned out to be an undercover agent for U. S. Customs...

...And who were these 32, other than Refco and Dittmer...

...Capcom's Seat on the Merc The head of the BCCI treasury department, Syed Ziauddin Ali Akbar, took the fall for the trading losses...

...What was her connection to the Group of 32 identified by Helmuth...

...When the price of feeding cattle at the large mid-western feedlots would reach a break-even point, the futures price would drop...

...Blair said these tactics cost him and his trading group more than $15 million...

...Partners, a Refco affiliate...

...Local law, made petroleum royalties the personal property of the sheikh...

...Out of this meeting came Abedi's celebrated takeover of an interstate banking chain based in Washington, D.C., patriotically renamed First American Bankshares and put in the hands of super-insider Clark Clifford...

...The Merc and the Board of Trade now run two of the best funded political action committees in the country...

...Dittmer pulled off a number of coups in the early 1980s, including a panic in soybean prices and a near corner on coffee, but his most memorable success was the boom in cattle futures that enriched Hillary...

...They provide a valuable service, allowing farmers access to some of the value of their crops well before harvest, by selling contracts to deliver a set amount at a set price...

...Blair doesn't appear as a major figure, possibly not even one of the 32...

...Galadari also wound up owing $20 million to Drexel Burnham, and large portions of both debts are still outstanding...

...But, he said, Being undermargined is not a violation of the customer involved but rather a violation of the firm where the customer's account is held...

...Through November, they transferred more than $100 million of Sheikh Zayed's money to America, primarily through BCCI headquarters in London...

...At the time, however, Bill and Hillary very likely had almost no inkling about their benefactors' extensive connections...

...Most of Hillary's trades, he said, were overnight trades, where she took the risk the market would change against her, rather than day trades, which are easier for brokers to manipulate...

...Without knowing such patterns of private obligation, the public can't tell whether its leaders are serving the common good or betraying it...

...These Caribbean duties made more sense than it might seem, according to investigative writers Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin in their BCCI book False Profits...

...In 1980, it cleared futures contracts through Conti Commodities, the international futures trader for Continental Grain Company...

...The trouble with these deals, Sheikh Zayed's lawyers later charged, was that Darwaish and his allies were in the habit of allocating the profits from winning trades to their personal accounts, and charging the losses to Abu Dhabi...

...Hillary had worked through the Springdale, Arkansas, office of Refco, a fast-growing Chicago-based commodities broker...

...Were any of her trades matched with other parties with an interest in buying the favor of a governor's wife...

...In a deal in May, Abu Dhabi turned over Swaleh Naqvi, Abedi's number two man, to American custody...

...Although prices rose steadily for most of the period, someone who bought at the beginning and sold at the peak could only have made a 1,700 percent return, not 10,000 percent...

...But almost nothing has been said about the equally fascinating appearance of Refco in the affairs of the world's most corrupt bank...

...He is the author of The Big Fix: Inside the S&L Scandal (Wiley) and co-author (with Douglas Frantz) of A Full Service Bank: How BCCI Stole Billions Around the World (Pocket Books...

...A principal at the bank was related to the manager of the crucial BCCI affiliate called ICIC, also based in the Caymans...

...In the name of market efficiency, the holders of exchange seats can give themselves advantages over their clients...

...BCCI investigators are currently puzzling over another series of transactions involving Akbar...

...More significantly, at the end of Hillary's first year of trading, the Chicago Mere itself suspended Bone for three years for "allocating" trades—letting favored customers take the winning trades and dumping the losers on the rest...

...opened an account with Refco itself, a relation renewed several times in the 1980s...

...October 2, the date of Dittmer's massive selling, was the biggest signal day in Helmuth's study...

...But Blair's real problems began in June 1979, as the cattle market began to break...

...Dittmer put out the welcome mat for his new clients...

...From October to May 1980, she traded in assorted commodities with Stephens Inc., with much smaller returns...

...There is also a third way: self-regulating traders can protect their positions by cutting politicians in on their take...

...Why, for instance, did she do so well on the market break in July when other Refco clients were beginning to feel very unhappy...

...As the stockbroker who arranged to buy these shares, he acted for the account of a dissident faction of the bank's board (which included himself) in an attempt to oust its management...

...Three years later, the CFTC settled a suit against Refco and Dittmer with a $525,000 fine, fts largest civil penalty to that date...

...But in accusing Dittmer of manipulating the Merc' s live cattle futures, he admits in effect that he was a disappointed participant...

...By itself, this tie might not amount to much, but it takes on added interest from the complex relations between the Clintons and the Stephens family of Little Rock, financiers and Arkansas king-makers with their own BCCI entanglement...

...Neither the Small Business Committee nor the CFTC will release the names of these 32 traders, since the The connection with Refco entangled the Clintons, however remotely, in another segment of the web of influence-buying that was then being spun across the world by the Bank of Credit and Commerce International...

...Yet the interconnections continue to multiply...

...Journal successfully sued earlier this year to unseal the suit...

...Melamed and his circle controlled the Merc up to his retirement, and for all his achievements, he has been blamed for condoning lax standards in floor trading...

...Hillary's personal broker was a professional poker player and 13-year veteran of Tyson Foods named Robert L. "Red" Bone, who had already compiled a substantial record of exchange rules infractions...

...It was only after the New York Times scoop that they released their tax returns for 1978 and '79...

...After losing more than $26,000 in June, she did her most aggressive trading in July, apparently going both short and long on separate blocks of fifty cattle contracts, her largest position yet...

...And if trades were intentionally matched, such practices could be used to disguise a deliberate looting of the bank...

...Zayed became the primary financial backer of the BCCI and still owns its remains...

...The connection with Refco entangled the Clintons, however remotely, in another segment of the web of influence-buying that was then being spun across the world by the Bank of Credit and Commerce International...

...In the fall of 1980, he invited Darwaish's assistant, Riaz Saleem Aslam, to dinner...

...But unless you really need a hopper of soybeans dumped on your front step in four months, a delivery contract is obviously riskier to buy than a stock or bond...

...Akbar left BCCI in 1986 after the trading disaster but in something less than disgrace...

...In August, said Blair, Dittmer whipsawed his clients in the other direction...

...Journalists have shown that her broker had to bend the rules—at the very least—to steer her these profits...

...Hillary must still feel grateful to James Blair and Tyson Foods, Inc., who allegedly steered her to her trades...

...Justice Department and Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau are debating how to handle the biggest BCCI figure yet to come to justice in the U.S...

...Akbar has now been convicted in three separate trials, most recently in a case this June in Abu Dhabi...

...Hillary and the Cattle Market The legend of the Clinton administration will forever include the tale of Hillary's 10,000 percent return on her investment in cattle futures...

...The closest Clinton link to BCCI, Jackson Stephens, maintains that he was an entirely unwitting tool and only for a short time...

...It may be no accident that the main defenders of Hillary's trades have been Melamed and his protégé, current Merc chairman John F. Sandner...

...He called for a CFTC investigation...

...It didn't help that they ran up many more losses than wins...

...The investments started with huge purchases of copper, although later, using both Refco and Drexel Burnham Lambert, Darwaish began to speculate disastrously in U.S...

...Every new revelation suggests a deeper pattern of relationships than anyone had previously expected...

...she was just providing for her family, she said, not raiding and pillaging corporations...

...Because the names of two senior Saudi intelligence officials appear on some accounts, some investigators speculate that money was funneled to the CIA's covert operations...

...Whether or not the Clintons were ever asked for anything in return, their tolerance toward corner-cutting economic gun-slingers had to be shaped by these surprising alliances, so at variance with the Clintons' populist rhetoric...

...He later received a second, more serious suspension for violating the first one...

...They also target well-placed congressmen for political contributions and other favors...

...In a 1987 audit, the Board of Trade criticized Capcom's London dealings with Refco and M.G...

...In 1981, he joined the elite club of thirty-seven dealers who buy Treasury securities for the Federal Reserve...

...BCCI Investments With Refco The deal apparently whetted Darwaish's appetite for American investments...

...To the embarrassment of Clark Clifford, Darwaish continued to be listed as a major shareholder in the takeover bid for First American filed with the SEC three months later...

...Blair charged that Dittmer would say to bet on a fall in the cattle futures price and then would force the price up...

...Aslam was arrested and suspended from the DPA at the end of December 1991, and Darwaish was fired a week later...

...The Springdale office again passed the word that Dittmer would be taking all of his June live fat cattle deliveries, thus supporting the price, so that his customers should close their short positions and go long, betting on a continued price run-up...

...Helmuth identified an interlocking group of 32 traders— out of the 1,027 in the cattle futures market—who were using the technique to determine their trading...

...Hillary herself sold short on April 30, making $12,900...

...Due to the passage of time," said Melamed, "it is impossible to ascertain with certainty the specific cause of the variances involved...

...After grossing more than $54,000 in one week, her biggest win ever, she abandoned the cattle futures market forever...

...It was founded in the Persian Gulf in 1972 by a Pakistani visionary named Agha Hasan Abedi, who inspired a cult-like devotion from his officers, primarily Urdu-speaking Pakistanis...

...Life in this market is tough, even without the tricky question of regulation...

...Around October 1979, he and several assistants set up a Panamanian shell corporation to trade in the American commodities markets...

...For Leo Melamed's retirement party in 1991, Dittmer transformed his plush Evanston, Illinois home into a replica of a trading room, with interconnecting telephones at each table and a bank of computer terminals and quote machines that scrolled Melamed's life story...

...Unlike the stock exchanges, which trade in shares in the ownership of corporations, the futures markets sell bets against the future prices of commodities...

...It can definitely be said, however, that Refco's international operations have attracted the interest of the untanglers of BCCI's affairs...

...Some orders came right from Abedi, he said...

...He called the bribe story "absolute rubbish...

...To his surprise, he found a trading technique that predicted temporary price drops in the 1978-79 cattle futures market with 100 percent accuracy...

...Senate investigators initially thought the $32 millionpayment was hush money, and senior bank officials blamed him as the sole cause of the treasury losses...

...Sheikh Zayed's agents subsequently sued Refco in Chicago federal court over the losses...

...The performance of her friend and adviser James Blair raises another set of questions about both of them, however...

...The way a president has been willing to make money speaks volumes about the economic policies he will advocate and the practices he will tolerate—particularly for one who has shown no qualms about using the federal regulatory and law enforcement apparatus for political ends...

...The complaints in Blair's suit against Dittmer and Refco paint the picture of a minor participant in a vast, long-term attempt to manipulate the market...

...And in fact, her trading firm, without admitting or denying the violations, was substantially fined by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1979 for margin violations, as well as other alleged infractions of Exchange rules...

...Increasingly desperate to cover his losses, he opened his doors to the world's vast underground economy, and BCCI became the central bank for terrorists, spies, arms dealers, and drug lords from Burma to Colombia...

...Neal Smith (D-Iowa), chairman of the House Small Business Committee, and he asked staff economist John W. Helmuth, a former commodities Refco with violating speculative limits on cotton and grain contracts...

...Then he would pass the word to bet on rising prices and proceed to dump supplies on the market, forcing the price down...

...To work well, any market has to be hedged with rules and definitions—but whoever makes these rules stands to siphon off some of the economic benefits...

...Akbar was a slim, normally dapper figure who will always be remembered as the hangdog fugitive in a denim jacket arrested in 1991 as he stepped off the ferry in Calais in flight from a British warrant...

...That's a hell of a volume," said Christopher Byron, the investigative journalist who discovered it...

...When Hillary was trading with Refco, she also opened a commodities account at Stephens Inc...

...The repeated appear44 The American Spectator August 1994 ance of the BCCI and its assorted fronts suggests that even now we underestimate Abedi's ambitions for penetrating the American economy...

...She and her husband were clearly receiving a heavy favor, not only from James Blair and Tyson, but from Refco itself...

...The First Couple had reason to be embarrassed...

...Refco, then and now, meant Thomas Dittmer, one of the boldest traders on the Merc...

...Dittmer's Cattle Stampede In 1979, widespread complaints about abnormal futures trading in cattle reached Rep...

...His detractors, including a number of former employees, charge that he padded his profits by feeding customers misleading information and then trading against them...

...James Blair, general counsel for Tyson Foods, Inc., was her guide to the market...

...A Merc spokesman wouldn't specify the violations, but said the size of the fine "speaks for itself...

...At one point, oil money flowed into Abu Dhabi, a component of the United Arab Emirates, at the rate of $1 billion a month...

...And futures trading is cutthroat by its structure...

...In the name of customer protection, government bureaucrats can overregulate and increase their own power...

...At this writing, the U.S...

...In October, in a final insult to his still believing customers, Dittmer and his salesmen talked them into going long immediately, holding their options until they "went off the board...

...Juries found against Dittmer in several suits, including one brought by former brokers from Refco's Springfield office, but the Federal Court of Appeals in St...

...Treasury bill futures...

...Treasury bonds...

...In some of her trades, he said, she may have not had enough cash in the account to meet margin requirements (i.e., to justify the credit that the broker extended in making the trades...

...From 1983 to 1985, the bank speculated recklessly in the futures market on U.S...

...In other words, 3 percent of the large traders made 70 percent of the profits...

...Ultimately, Sheikh Zayed charged that they defrauded him of $96 million...

...Instead, charged Blair, Dittmer "took such market action as to cause the market to plunge...

...The bank had made a $32 million investment in an international brokerage called Capcom Financial Services, Ltd., that Akbar helped set up in 1984...

...Through Capcom and Refco, his agents had become players in the Chicago Merc, which was then on its own way to becoming a major factor in global finance...

...Hillary may have been a very small fish in Refco's fish fry, but it now looks as if she benefited from a massive, and successful, scheme to manipulate the futures market...

...At the same time, his agents tried to buy their way into every political elite they encountered including the Arkansas establishment that was watching the rise of the Clintons...

...The Clintons and the Risk-Takers These murky global currents, apparently so remote from the Clintons, are looking more important in retrospect...

...In April 1979, Blair charged, Dittmer and Refco passed on word that Dittmer would take delivery of cattle as The American Spectator August 1994 45 contracts expired, thus keeping them from the exchange and propping up prices...

...A bank reporter for the Caymans' main newspaper relays a rumor that the bank was owned by the Gokal family, Pakistani shippers intimately involved with the BCCI...

...Its shareholders included Sheikh Kamal Adham, the extraordinarily effective head of Saudi intelligence during the 1970s, and two associates, and two of America's best known cable magnates, Robert Magness and Larry Romrell of Tele-Communications Inc...

...From 1975 to 1981, Darwaish was chairman of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) and the Department of Private Affairs (DPA) for Abu Dhabi's ruler, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan...

...post catered primarily to Tyson Foods, the nation's largest poultry firm, whose operations give the small Ozark town a pungent, penetrating odor...

...The far-sighted Abedi had cultivated Sheikh Zayed well before the mid-seventies boom in oil prices, taking the avid falconer on lavish bustard hunts in the wilds of Pakistan...

...Even so, the Clintons for years had treated this windfall as one of their guiltier secrets...

...His name was Abdullah Darwaish...

...Capcom became a clearing member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in October 1985 and also joined the Board of Trade and the National Futures Association, the trade group that polices the industry...

...Market professionals say they almost never see behavior like Hillary's last-minute killing and sudden exit, but it will take a lot more information to understand what was truly going on...

...But it's clear that Dittmer wasn't among the 995 losers...

...In 1982, a new division called Refco International began placing orders for The American Spectator August 1994 a Dubai-based businessman named A.W...

...But to the extent that their doings touch the current occupants of the White House, they become matters of even greater urgency...

...In a suggestive coincidence, the Gokals' own commodity traders, Tradigrain, S.A., of Geneva, opened a Refco account in 1988...

...Beyond these questions is the very urgent Matter of the BCCI investigations...

...11 The trouble with these deals, Sheikh Zayed's lawyers later charged, was that Darwaish and his allies were in the habit of allocating the profits from winning trades to their personal accounts, and charging the losses to Abu Dhabi...

...bank that Jack Stephens was peddling, he advanced one of Sheikh Zayed's minor sons as a stockholder, with Darwaish acting as the boy's agent...

...Since then he has been in the hands of the federal government, which is negotiating a plea bargain, while D.A...

...A year later, just as the operation was about to collapse, Refco Capital lent the investors $650,000 for their account at Drexel...

...In November 1977, Abedi met in Little Rock with Jimmy Carter's confidant Bert Lance and investment banker Jackson Stephens, a power above and beyond Bill Clinton...

...And the Clintons' futures trading may have made them further beholden to the Stephens bond empire of Arkansas—and entangled them indirectly James Ring Adams is The American Spectator's special investigator on Whitewater...

...Deflecting some well-justified cries of hypocrisy, Hillary distinguished her earnings from the 1980s "greed" her husband had campaigned against...

...Refco and the BCCI are worth studying in their own right...

...Credit for the growth goes to Leo Melamed, a World War II refugee first elected Merc chairman in 1969 and a dominant power ever since...

...The exchanges run elaborate lobbies in Washington and hire government insiders for their own operations...

...On October 15, 1979, Hillary's own investment adviser, Tyson counsel Blair, filed a suit charging Red Bone, Refco, and its president Thomas Dittmer with systematically taking their customers to the cleaners...

...In 1993, the Merc's Commodity Futures Political Fund disbursed nearly $200,000, making it the eighth most generous finance, insurance, and real estate PAC...

...In this context, Hillary's windfall in the futures market is chilling...

...he also steadfastly ignored economic reality, and wound up losing more than $10 billion...

...Melamed issued a second statement at the end of May, based on the Merc trade register, and made an interesting qualification...

...42 The American Spectator August 1994 BCCI's penetration of the American financial market (see TAS, November 1992...

...Its Arkansas outspecifically at issue, but it fit the pattern: her return on her first day of trading—more than $5,000 on $1,000 down—would have been mathematically impossible if Exchange rules were strictly followed...

...For every winning bet, there has to be a loser...

...Knowing they were betting short, he did take deliveries of cattle, "in order to 'squeeze' the short positions...

...Melamed wrote an analysis of Hillary's trades for the White House and agreed to take follow-up calls from reporters.tions...

...In certain contexts, even apparently neutral policy• measures, such as reform of bank regulation, can have sinister connotations...

...In this 'standard arrangement, the broker in effect gives the customer credit for the balance as long as cash reserves meet exchange standards...

...The White House has called recently on Leo Melamed, the genius of the futures market, and by extension the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, for a substantial favor that has helped them to defuse the cattle-futures scandal...

...The federal regulators of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) may not be the toothless wonders they are sometimes made out to be, but they certainly inspire far less fear than the lawyers from the Securities Exchange Commission do in the stock market...

...This is when most investors get wiped out...

...It's hard to reconcile the White House summaries of her trades with the monthly statements from Refco...

...Over the period studied, all traders made a net profit of about $156 million...

...At the end of 1979, the Merc itself fined Refco $250,000 and suspended Dittmer for six months...

...Dittmer was personally assessed $150,000 of the penalty and suspended from cotton-futures trading for 120 days...

...46 The American Spectator August 1994...

...Such lobbying has helped the futures world preserve a large degree of self-regulation...

...Abedi himself, now an invalid in Pakistan, was recently convicted in absentia in an Abu Dhabi court and sentenced to eight years...

...Instead, said Blair, Dittmer arranged the deliveries...

...If the value of the contract falls below the purchase price, the broker can make a "margin call" for the balance...

...In a study distributed by the White House press office, Leo Melamed, the former Merc chairman, exonerated Hillary of wrongdoing in these trades, but he chose rather narrow grounds...

...The auditors said that a series of transactions, all with Refco, constituted trades when the Chicago markets were closed, a violation of exchange rules...

...Refco was one of the four brokers that handled these trades...

...In addition to his role at the treasury department, he ran the bank's Grand Cayman branch...

...His complaint, which misspells Dittmer's name as "Ditmar," shows only a slim acquaintance with the Refco head, although Blair alludes to Dittmer's physical presence in Springdale during part of the trading...

...If you buy a contract, thinking prices will go up, The American Spectator August 1994 41 someone is selling, thinking prices will drop...

...The regulators charged the later scandals, and his lawyers have even sent vaguely threatening letters to the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which has harped on the theme...

...Controversy has always swirled around the two institutions that make these markets: the Board of Trade and especially the upstart Mercantile Exchange, which has a well-earned reputation as the most bare-knuckles floor in America...

...The Merc expelled Capcom in October 1989 and fined it $500,000 for "the misuse of its facilities...

...At the time, the CFTC wasn't interested...

...To Helmuth, the arrangement raised the possibility of joint trading, price manipulations, and speculative limits violations...

...Louis later overturned the judgments...

...and to Refco and its president Thomas Dittmer, which brokered them...

...It's also an open question whether Bill Clinton' s brush with this world is influencing the federal government's efforts, or lack of effort, at getting to the bottom of the BCCI scandal...

...But the biggest loser with Refco was BCCI itself...

...Morgenthau's more aggressive investigators make no secret of their frustration at his lack of cooperation...

...April 12, 1979, is one of Helmuth's signal dates for short selling, producing a one-day drop of 46 cents in the August 1979 contract...

...but significantly with the Pakistani financiers who brought us BCCI...

...BCCI is not only the world's largest single bank fraud, but also the most ubiquitous...

...In the meantime, it would be a good idea to keep the economic initiatives of the president on a very tight leash...

...When Union Bank crashed in 1983, Refco dunned him for the $6 million margin in his account...

...The Wild World of Futures Trading in futures on the Chicago exchanges is one of the surest ways for an investment novice to lose his shirt (or her blouse...

...Hillary's phenomenal success becomes even more of a mystery considering that her main adviser was having such a miserable experience, and Blair himself tried to cover up the discrepancy...

...Helmuth, now at Iowa State University, recounts that the committee subpoenaed trading records and started running a series of statistical tests...

...The extraordinary live cattle contracts market of 1978-79 wasn't as innocent as Hillary now portrays it, nor were her associations—sleazy and otherwise—as limited as the White House would have us believe...

...Dittmer used his windfall to make Refco a global player in metal refining, financial futures, and money management...

...The action cited "serious and repeated violations of record-keeping functions, order-entry procedures, margin requirements and hedge procedures...

...The one exception, he admitted, was her final trade in July 1979, where she made her last killing...

...takeover that created First American Bankshares...

...By the time she closed her accounts in May 1980, she had cleared $99,540, which allowed the strapped couple to put up a down payment on their house and buy tax-exempt municipal bonds...

...he public has an T overwhelming interest in knowing what business networks have claims on a president and his family...

...That done, said Blair, Dittmer began selling his own contracts and became a massive seller up to the fifteenth, when Blair filed his suit...

...He opposed an attempt by another unhappy customer to get access to the records, and he fought vehemently when the Wall Street The White House has called recently on Leo Melamed, the genius of the futures market, and by extension the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, for a substantial favor that has helped them to defuse the cattle-futures scandal...

...Hillary seems to have been a hanger-on taking scraps of advice from the real insiders...

...During the 1970s, the Merc invented futures trading in foreign currencies and stock indices and metamorphosed from the bane of Midwest farmers into a major player in global finance...

...Abedi's agents also catered to the less wholesome tastes of the portly Crown Prince Khalifa...

...Coincidentally or not, Dittmer and Refco picked up a new client in the aftermath...

...But there's been remarkably little reporting on the buccaneering waters of the Chicago futures market 40 The American Spectator August 1994 where she made her fortune and the lurid crew that handled her account.1 Hillary's trading came to light in mid-March after Lloyd Cutler took over as White House counsel...

...BCCI's Quest for Political Connections Hillary's success in this milieu makes no sense on her terms...

...BCCI prosecutors will agree that Stephens probably never met Darwaish or any other of the nominee shareholders in thetrader, to look into it...

...In 1988, a Cayman Islands outfit called the Gulf Union Bank began placing massive options orders with Refco, up to 6,000 option trades at a time...

...The role of Jackson Stephens as financial backer of Governor Clinton has already been widely reported, as has his service to the The focus on Hillary's own trades has obscured a broader question: What was a nice Democratic politician's wife doing in a place like the futures market, anyway...

...In line with his new policy of "openness," the White House admitted to New York Times investigators that she had plunged $1,000 in the notoriously choppy futures market in October 1978, when her husband had emerged as the clear front-runner in his first race for governor...

...ADM chairman Dwayne Andreas, a critic as well as heavy user of the exchanges, gave $600,000 in the sixteen months before May 1992, mostly to the Republicans...

...Dittmer's fans say he used his background as a cattleman to predict shortages in the herds coming to market...

...Galadari owned the Union Bank of the Middle East, one of the largest in the United Arab Emirates...

...The futures were a bet on the direction of interest rates and required split-second timing...

...But she left with a confusing flourish...

...Her departure from Refco was very likely influenced by Blair's sorry experience in June...

...As a result of the recommendation, Akbar was indicted in Tampa in 1988 for money-laundering, and found guilty in a British trial...

...While resisting the temptation of conspiratorial fantasies, one has to say there is a story here that hasn't yet been told...

...He reacts vehemently to attempts to connect him to confidentiality of these records is protected by law...

...Does the Clinton administration really have the heart to press Naqvi for all of the BCCI' s secrets...

...one incredulous auditor found that BCCI was buying contracts and leaving them in desk drawers...

...The Journal's purpose, he said, "appears to be the unjustified hope that it would find something in the file that could be used to damage the President's wife...

...Member firm Archer Daniels Midland, a giant in agribusiness, recently ranked fourth as a source of unlimited "soft money" contributions to Democratic Despite the isolation of Springdale, a northern suburb of Fayetteville where Hillary had been teaching at the University of Arkansas Law School, the young governor's wife was plugged into one of the rising powers on the Chicago exchange...

...Everyone concerned is now trying to minimize their importance...

...By that time, however, Hillary was out of the cattle market and closing out her account with Refco...

...Probers are now asking whether this huge transfer from the Caymans was part of a last-minute looting of the BCCI...

...Refco compiled a remarkable record of dealings with troubled Middle Eastern banks and bankers...

...Only one of her live cattle trades in the records released by the White House remotely matches the signal dates in Helmuth's study...

...Prices dropped by $2.65 and more in two futures contracts, the largest break in the survey, and the actual market price of choice steers continued to fall sharply over the next week...

...Hillary's account wasn't I Assuming a leveraged first investment at 10 percent margin, which is futures-speak for putting a down payment on the contract of 10 percent of its face value, carried by the broker in a margin account...

...When Abedi decided to buy the Washington, D.C...

...But these 32 captured $110 million of that total...

...The complaints generated a congressional study, stiff regulatory discipline for Refco and Dittmer, and legislation tightening futures regulaParty organs...

...They worked through a Swiss brokerage and placed their orders with Refco...

...But in an interview with London's Financial Times shortly after his first prison term, Akbar stoutly denied that he had sole authority to make trades...

...Through its connections with major figures in the cable industry, Capcom and BCCI were apparently establishing a beachhead in American broadcasting...

...His lavish entertainments raised eyebrows, even among the nouveaux riches of the Merc...

...In 1981, Stephens Inc...

...A sharp-faced, sharp-eyed traditionalist, who preferred Bedouin tents and hunting to boardrooms, Sheikh Zayed delegated his fortuneto a series of advisers, including Darwaish and, fatefully, Agha Hasan Abedi...

...The dimensions of all these connections have been consistently underestimated in current reporting...

...As such, Darwaish managed one of the most fabulous fortunes in the world...

...The saga of Capcom and Refco suggests that the embarrassment could start in its own back yard...

...On January 22, 1980, after reaching a settlement, both sides to the suit petitioned to seal the records...

...The hand of the BCCI has been suspected in a minority investment these businessmen made in Ted Turner's Cable News Network...

...Conti was subsequently purchased by Refco...

...But the focus on Hillary's own trades has obscured a broader question: What was a nice Democratic politician's wife doing in a place like the futures market, anyway...

...Dittmer, Blair claimed, not only was feeding false information to Red Bone and his customers, he was telling them he would do exactly the opposite of his actual plans...

...treasury operations were run out of the BCCI's Cayman Islands holding company and some of the most sensitive clients' accounts were located there...

...Refco handled both sides of this trade, and the surviving records fail to identify the broker who took the order...

...Estimates of the losses reach $860 million, although BCCI may have dumped other losses on this debacle...

...Galadari...

...Just a month before he went to work for Hillary, he had completed a one-year partial suspension on charges of plotting to manipulate the egg-futures market on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange...

...Yet the Stephens name has not otherwise figured in press accounts...

...Refco and Stephens also maintained business ties, but it's an open question whether these involved the BCCI...

...But no one expects that the Pakistani government will deliver him to the justice of Sheikh Zayed...

...Stephens Inc., the family brokerage considered one of the largest outside Wall Street, maintained links with Refco throughout the 1980s...