Riggs Bank

Riggs Bank   (Bank)
Formation	1836
Extinction	2005
Headquarters	Washington DC, United States
Staff	1,450
A bank used by the CIA and other deep state actors for various illicit purposes.

Riggs Bank was a bank in Washington DC which enjoyed a "relationship" with the CIA similar to the BCCI., especially after 1981, when Joe Allbritton acquired a controlling interest in the bank and became chairman.

That relationship included top Riggs executives receiving U.S. government security clearances, and the bank handling funds of CIA clients and allies like General Augusto Pinochet, Saudi ambassador to US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and keeping the U.S. accounts of African oil dictators.

Official narrative

"The most important bank in the most important city in the world."

Activities

Carter Beese is said to have met George Bush's Texas friend Joe Allbritton just as Allbritton was buying into Riggs Bank.

Use by Prince Bandar bin Sultan

The bank had a relationship to Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the longime Saudi ambassador to US. The Prince was used as a conduit to finance the Contras at the behest of the White House, financed the Afghan rebels against the Soviet Union, and serving as a go-between in the mending of the Libya-U.S. relationship. The Al-Yamamah arms deal, which was signed in 1985, also uncovered details of about a billion dollars of extra payments to the Prince. Bandar's wife, Princess Haifa bint Faisal also paid Omar al-Bayoumi through this bank.

General Pinochet

The CIA worked with Pinochet through his secret police chief, Manuel Contreras, who banked at Riggs as recently as 1979. Riggs opened multiple accounts for the dictator and his family, used aliases and offshore shell corporations to disguise his ownership from U.S. bank regulators, and "accepted millions of dollars in deposits from him with no serious inquiry into the source of his wealth." All this was done "with the knowledge and support of the Bank’s leadership," including Allbritton, who, along with other senior bank officials, would periodically fly down to Santiago for meetings with the dictator. Riggs only closed the accounts in 2004, shortly before its own collapse.

Equatorial Guinea

Under Joe Allbritton, Riggs also conducted business with the dictator of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasago, who took power in a 1979 coup. Obiang’s relationship with Riggs began in 1995, just as American oil companies found huge offshore reserves in Equatorial Guinea. By 2003, Obiang’s regime had become the bank’s single largest customer, with about $700 million in 60 different personal and state accounts. Riggs accepted cash deposits for the accounts of up to $1 million at a time, in 20-pound bundles of shrink-wrapped bills. The bank also helped Obiang buy two Washington area mansions worth about $4 million combined, and issued a debit card to his wife with a $10,000 daily limit to facilitate her D.C. shopping sprees.

Collapse

In 2004, the U.S. Senate released a report saying Riggs had "turned a blind eye" to evidence that the bank was "handling the proceeds of foreign corruption." The Treasury Department hit the bank with a $25 million penalty. The next year, Riggs paid a $16 million criminal fine over related charges that it had failed to report suspicious transactions with foreign account holders. The judge who imposed the fine described Riggs as "a greedy corporate henchman of dictators and their corrupt regimes." The relationship with the CIA made prosecution of the bank’s officials impossible.

Robert Allbritton avoided any fallout from the Riggs collapse. Though resigning from Riggs after its sale to PNC, he remained as chairman and CEO of Allbritton Communications Co., the privately held media company that owns several television stations as well as Politico.

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