LETTER TO JOHN H. WRIGHT FROM RICHARD A. LANDKAMER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000100370008-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 9, 2010
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: March 3, 1986
• Content Type: LETTER

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Skeletons in Desk's Closet
I5CLDYVL TO IKS NOTILIGHT
By Warren Hougb
A billion-dollar undercover net-
work dealing in worldwide currency'
and gold speculation, espionage,
drug money and the laundering of
stolen funds has been unearthed by
federal and local investigators prob-
ing the murder of the controversial
New York financier Nicholas Deak
(SPOTLIGHT, Dec. 16, 1985).
But the CIA. reportedly with high ad-
ministration support, is making an all-
out effort to smother the scandal, The
SPOTLIGHT has learned from law ea- .
forcemeat officials close to the case.
These sources, who say that the
clampdown on the revelations emerging
from the Deak inquiry recalls the ham-
handed White House effort to cover up
the Watergate burglary 12 years ago,
point to the following discoveries made
so far by prober;:
? The Deak-Perera International
Banking Corp.. which was set up by
Deak in Hartford, Connecticut and soon
became known on the world's money
markets as "Depebanco," engaged in
mysterious transactions totaling, over
the years, billions of dollars without ever
accounting for its operations to any
federal or state regulator.
Depebanco was known to specialize in
shady, fast-profit deals such as selling
certificates of deposit to wealthy
foreigners who wanted to smuggle their
assets abroad. Now the investigators
some of the largest-and most brazen-
corporate bribes ever disbursed by U.S.
megaconglomcrates. It has been known
for some time that the Lockheed Corp.
funneled nearly $10 million through
Dcak's offices in Los Angeles and
Tokyo during the early 1970s to corrupt
the entire Japanese government. Probers
are now reportedly on the trail of several
other such major under-the-table trans-
fers, which are believed to incriminate
top officials in five nations.
? Another questionable commerce
ip which peak became the international
leader focused, according to federal in-
vestigators, on the U.S. foreign aid
funds stolen each year by the bureau-
crats of recipient nations such as Zaire
or Egypt. "What you have here are civil
servants, hundreds of them, whose of-
ficial income may be below $300 a
month, but who manage to skim off
millions from the American assistance
payments they handle." says a former
high U.S. customs official who is now a
member of a private law firm. "These
crooks have a problem. They can neither
declare nor bank their loot.
"From Guinea-Bissau all the way to
Greece, these thieving bureaucrats came
to look on Dcak's organization as an
'ask-no-questions, sec-no-evil' financial
network that could be relied on to laun-
der ill-gotten gains across any aymber of
national frontiers."
? The overlords of the narcotics
trade, now estimated to gross more than
$100 billion in the United States annual-
ly, looked on Depebanco and other
DcpebaArp w o 9 J r.unregglat0d,9ec'k,, D4P~f. S9[f 9ii; i 4F1~,','.~lRa?f'~l. $?fe
subsidiaries were used for more than 30 house" in the words of a young federal
years to channel vast covert CIA fund- prosecutor in New York City. According
ing around the world. to this source, while the total of drug
? Secret funds to fuel espionage and dollars churned through Deak's finan-
covert action operations, including huge cial network has not yet been added up.
CIA payoffs to foreign politicians, were a number of transactions involving $100
not the only kind of back-channel bank million or more have been uncovered by
business handled by Deak'~ orgi?nq ~- ? auditors.
tion. It was also a major conduit for ? StraQgely, : i9vestigalors . noty at-
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