Scandals: Is That All There Is?

It was the ultimate package deal, a grand compromise designed to clean up one of the world's messiest piles of financial wreckage. Bank liquidators, acting on behalf of the moribund Bank of Credit & Commerce International, marched into a crowded Manhattan courtroom last Friday and settled, in one unexpected swoop, all U.S. criminal charges outstanding against B.C.C.I. as a corporation. The bank, which in the U.S. is now essentially just a hollow shell, pleaded guilty to federal and state charges of racketeering, fraud and money laundering. The liquidators agreed to surrender virtually every penny of B.C.C.I.'s assets in the U.S., a...