Nugan Hand Bank

Nugan Hand Bank was an Australian merchant bank that collapsed in 1980 in sensational circumstances amidst rumours of involvement by the Central Intelligence Agency and organized crime.

Founding

Nugan Hand Ltd. was founded in Sydney 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).^{[citation needed]} 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.^[1]

Scandal and collapse

Concerns over the bank's questionable accounting processes began to circulate by the late 1970s as investors attending annual general meetings 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.^[2]

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.^[3]

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".^[4][5]

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.^[6]

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.^[7][8][9]

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.^[10][11]

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.^[12]

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.^[13]

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.

References

1. ^ Tony Reeves, Mr Sin: The Abe Saffron Dossier, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2007, p 84.
2. ^ Sheehan, Paul; Tom Ballantyne; and Greg Wilesmith (August 21, 1981), "How Michael Hand Left Australia", Sydney Morning Herald 
3. ^ Wilson, Marshall; and Stephen Foley (April 8, 1983), "Drugs probe to hear Perth man's evidence", The Age 
4. ^ Morton, James; and Susanna Lobez (2010), Dangerous to Know: An Australasian Crime Compendium, Melbourne University Publishing, p. unknown, ISBN 978-0522856811 
5. ^ NOTE: Morton and Lobez are CITING: Owen, John. Sleight of Hand: The $25 Million Nugan Hand Bank Scandal. 1983.
6. ^ Kwitny, Jonathan (Aug-Sep 1987), Mother Jones Magazine 12 (6): 10 
7. ^ Foley, Stephen (April 8, 1983), "NSW report shows link with Marcos relatives", The Age 
8. ^ Kwitny, Jonathan (1988), The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA, Touchstone Books (Simon & Schuster), p. 37,186 
9. ^ Stich, Rodney (2010), Japanese and U.S. World War II Plunder and Intrigue, Silverpeak Enterprises, p. 149, ISBN 978-0932438706 
10. ^ McCoy, Alfred W. (1991), The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Lawrence Hill Books, p. 461-469, ISBN 978-1556521263 
11. ^ Seagrave, Sterling; and Peggy Seagrave (2003), Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold, Verso, p. 98, 148, ISBN 978-1859845424 
12. ^ eg, Blum, W 'Australia 1973-1975: Another free election bites the dust' in Killing Hope: US military and CIA interventions since World War II. Common Courage Press, Maine 1995, p. 249. Inter alia, it is alleged that the bank transferred $2.4 million to the Liberal Party of Australia which contested two forced elections in 1974 and 1975 to oust Whitlam's Labor government.
13. ^ "Call For Further Tests On Body In Nugan Grave", Sydney Morning Herald, February 9, 1981 

• Cockington, J. (2001) History Happened Here, ABC Books, Sydney.
• Kwitney, J. The Crimes of Patriots, a True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA; New York: W.W. Norton, 1987, ISBN 0-393-02387-7. An adaptation is also available online at Google Books, page 16 of Mother Jones Magazine Vol. 12, No 6, Sept 1987.
• McCoy, A. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade; New York: Harpers and Row, Publishers Inc., 1991 ISBN 1-55652-125-1
• Owen, J. Sleight of Hand : The $25 million Nugan Hand Bank Scandal; Balmain, Sydney, Australia: Colporteur Press, 1983. ISBN 0-86399-023-1
• Lombardi, Mark: Global Networks. Mark Lombardi, Robert Carleton Hobbs, Judith Richards; Independent Curators, 2003 (published for the travelling exhibition of his work, "Mark Lombardi Global Networks"). ISBN 0-916365-67-0
• Jiggens, John Lawrence (2004) The Sydney Connection: The CIA, drugs, Nugan Hand and the murder of Donald Mackay; Network to Investigate the Mackay Murder, Hill End, Queensland ISBN 0-9578684-1-3
• Jiggens, John Lawrence (2008) (pdf). Marijuana Australiana: Cannabis use, popular culture and the Americanisation of drugs policy in Australia, 1938-1988. Queensland University of Technology. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/15949/. Retrieved 2009-03-12. 

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.