Shell Game: A True Story of Greed, Power, Banking, and Clandestine Politics

For much of the 1980s, BNL-Atlanta, a branch of the giant Italian-owned Banca Nazionale del Lavoro of Rome, helped finance exports to Iraq from the U.S. and other Western nations. BNL-Atlanta's first involvement in underwriting exports began with foodstuffs but quickly progressed to other products, including military weapons. Although most Western governments forbade arms trading with Iraq, the U.S. winked at the BNL-Atlanta operation, as did BNL executives in New York City and Rome. When the scheme finally became public, government prosecutors as well as BNL officials tried to place the blame on the Atlanta branch manager, Christopher Drogoul. Mantius, a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, does yeoman service in sorting out the complex tale, in which nearly every party involved, including numerous U.S. government agencies, was looking to protect its own interests at the expense of the truth. And the sad fact, according to Mantius, is that most of those responsible for the illegal arms trading supported by the BNL loans escaped unscathed. (Dec.)