LONDON, May 14: Abbas Gokal, the Pakistani ``shipping mogul'' was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 14 years in prison. Gokal, who is charged with defrauding the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) of $ 1.2 billion is perhaps the world's biggest single fraudster. Gokal's company, the Gulf Group, was the BCCI's biggest single borrower. The money sustained a life-style which included Rolls-Royces, private jets, homes in London and Geneva, and a chalet in a Swiss ski resort.

The Gulf Group and BCCI were two sides of one operation: two bankrupt companies which maintained the illusion over each other's solvency. BCCI was able to show all its dud loans to the Gulf Group's front companies as solid assets, and the Gulf Group was kept afloat with loans, some real, some fake, from the BCCI. The money that the BCCI did ``lend'' to the Gulf Group belonged to its shareholders account holders.

Abbas Kassimali Gokal is one of three sons (the other two are Mustafa and Murtaza) of a wealthy Karachi based trader, and was educated at St Patrick's High School. One observer described Abbas Gokal as ``something of a dandy. He sported a goatee, and usually had a square silk handkerchief poking out of the breast pocket of his double-breasted suit from London's Savile Row.''

The Gokal brothers were ``respected'' businessmen. Close to General Zia, Mustafa Gokal, although a British citizen, was an adviser to the late President and even served as minister of shipping. The Gokals were described as ``cosmopolitan men, thoroughly experienced in western ways, who carried themselves with style.'' Some of this style was lavished at parties at international conventions such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, where Abbas Gokal received the good and great of the world.

Their shipping business made profits in as underhand a way as it is now clear as to how all their businesses were conducted. The more serious allegation was about the Gulf Group's role in the procurement of nuclear technology. The Guardian newspaper, in 1991, reported that the BCCI had bankrolled a secret three-nation consortium (Libya, Pakistan and Argentina) seeking to assembly atomic weapons. The paper, for reasons of libel, did not say that the Gulf Group was suspected of having provided the transport.

It was this suspicion which was to be Gokal's undoing. Based on this the US authorities in 1994, proposed a deal with Gokal that he would attend an inquiry in New York and name any US citizen who had been involved in the nuclear arms deals. In exchange, the US Government would drop all charges against him. The British police, on a tip-off about Gokal's journey, arrested him when his flight from Karachi landed in Frankfurt en route to New York.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.