Banking and Organized Crime

Penny Lernoux: “At least one issue was clear in both the Nugan Hand and World Finance Corporation cases: The CIA’s former employees have run amok. That should come as no surprise after the CIA’s record of collaboration with gangsters like ‘Lucky’ Luciano and Santo Trafficante, or the role of CIA agents in Watergate and the Chilean coup, to cite but a few such ‘adventures.’ ‘I’m Glad the CIA Is Immoral’ was the title of the confessions of one ex-CIA agent, who wrote a cold war justification of the agency’s methods in Europe. But when people are schooled in immorality, they don’t suddenly turn moral when they leave the agency, and that may explain why so many former agents were mixed up with Nugan Hand and WFC. Paul Helliwell, the former OSS intelligence officer who specialized in Florida banks and Caribbean tax havens, was a good example of the breed—a man who knew how to exploit his connections with the CIA long after leaving its employ.“ In Banks We Trust (1984)