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Bank of Credit and Commerce International

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) not only on securing this debate but on his determination and tenacity during the many years since the liquidation of BCCI, to secure justice for its creditors. I wish him in advance a happy birthday next Wednesday and thank him for his kind comments. As he would expect, I have read some of the previous Adjournment debates on this issue, and I give no weight to the fact that he said some very kind things about the Ministers who preceded me in this role. My right hon. Friend has campaigned with great energy to keep the issue in the public eye, and throughout that period his objective has been simple—to ensure that the hard-working savers, businesses, local authorities and others who, in good faith, deposited their funds in BCCI get as much of their money back as possible. I assure him that the Government share that objective, and we will certainly not forget the victims of the whole process. He set out the history and the scope of the bank's operations at their height. He also made comparisons between what happened then and the more recent banking troubles that the Government have been dealing with. I want to return to that later. The main focus of my right hon. Friend's speech was a series of perfectly legitimate questions about speed, the fees involved, and the role of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and its predecessor Department. Let me begin with the issue of time scale. The liquidation of BCCI was, as he said, one of the largest and most complex ever seen in this country. It involved a bank that operated in many different jurisdictions around the world—I think that he said 70 countries, which is broadly in line with our understanding. That complexity has of course contributed to the length of time that the liquidation has lasted. It is not the longest in the country's history—there have been examples that have lasted many decades—but 17 years is a very long time on anyone's time scale. The next question is what that 17-year period has resulted in. As my right hon. Friend said, when the bank first went into liquidation, there were fears that creditors might see very little of their money returned. However, the success rate has been greater than was initially feared. The creditors have now received about 84 per cent. of their debts and, as he remarked, they will receive a further 2.5 per cent. before the end of this year. Although the process has indeed been very lengthy, it has not been one that has not yielded the results for depositors for which he has campaigned with such skill and determination over the years. The UK liquidation's domestic receipts, together with its share of global receipts, amount to some $4.18 billion, which includes a sizeable payment from the bank's majority shareholders. Significant realisations have also been raised from legal actions taken against third parties on the basis of fraudulent action. In addition to the next dividend, the liquidators hope that it may be possible to pay a further, final dividend to creditors at the end of the liquidation.