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Texas Commerce Bank

A Houston bank at the junction of two scandals

Texas Commerce Bank appears in this archive twice, twenty-three years apart, in stories that share nothing but the name. In the first it is listed among the American banks that "burnt their fingers" in the 1974/5 fringe banking crisis, and then named again in a five-point list of things said to have collapsed in August 1974. In the second it is the Houston account into which a 1997 Treasury bill transaction was to be settled, described as owned by Chemical Bank and used, in the words of one participant, to "lock down the asset".

Neither appearance stands alone. The 1974 list belongs to the Crown Agents — a British public body, a web of bond purchases touching the US Treasury, and a concealment that the archive says ran from 1969 to 1975. The 1997 material belongs to a retired CIA officer offering a limited power of attorney over a Houston account. Texas Commerce Bank sits at the junction only because the archive put it there.

The fringe banking list

The archive names the participants explicitly: "The American Banks that burnt their fingers in the 1974/5 Fringe banking crisis were:"

This is why the thought has children. Franklin National Bank and British Israeli Bank sit beneath it, and Michele Sindona is one of its four jumps. It is a node in a five-bank cluster, not a bank with a history of its own in this file.

August 1974, as the archive lists it

Immediately after the bank list: "In, August 1974 the following occurred;" — Nixon resigns, Crown Agents collapse, Texas Commerce Bank collapse, Israeli-British Bank collapse, Franklin National collapse (Sindona Empire etc.).

The list is presented as a sequence of connected events in one month, and it repeats across several summary documents in the set. One entry does not survive checking, and the archive refutes it itself. That is dealt with separately below.

The Crown Agents: the loss and the concealment

The underlying allegation is financial and specific. "The financial activities of the Crown Agents between 1967 and 1974 resulted in a huge loss of money. Insider trading within the company was paramount during this period. Subsidiaries of Crown Agents internationally were utilised for the movement of funds. The shareholdings of those companies were privately held by the directors of Crown Agents."

The archive adds two contraventions of exchange control: "both by accepting and placing foreign currency deposits and by building up portfolios of foreign currency securities through the Joint Consolidated Funds. The Crown Agents did this as principals, despite the Bank of England's stipulation in 1970 that such transactions must be done only as agents."

It then makes a much larger claim about concealment: "Company records confirm that the Crown Agents went to great lengths to disguise and bury their darkest years between 1969 and 1975 as did the CIA." And, in the same passage, that "In 1976, President Bush Snr. was appointed director of the CIA to put a 'lid' on that period of history." The connection between the two halves of that sentence is the archive's assertion. No document in this corpus links the Crown Agents concealment to the appointment of a CIA director.

David Green, Four Millbank and the dormant nominee

The mechanism runs through two Crown Agents subsidiaries and one man. "Through Four Millbank Investments and the Joint Consolidated Fund (both subsidiaries of the Crown Agents), long-term bonds were purchased on behalf of their principals in OPEC, using Eurodollars."

Then the parallel purchase: "David Green purchased the same long-term bonds on behalf of Four Millbank Nominees, a nominee company acting on behalf of individuals in the private sector."

Green's own quoted position: "Four Millbank Nominees is the name used by me in connection with my sole beneficial ownership of the Bonds and that Four Millbank Nominees has no legal status or personality independent of me."

And the reason it mattered: "At the time of the issue of the Bonds, Four Millbank Nominees was a dormant nominee company which had been replaced by Four Millbank Investments for Crown Agents' activities, and in terms of its Memorandum of Articles could not hold assets. This allowed David Green to use the company name for the purchase of Bonds for himself and on behalf of others outside the jurisdiction of the UK."

The Memorandum of Articles is the hinge of the whole allegation: a company that may act only as an agent, and may not hold assets on behalf of clients, was used to hold bonds.

Great Peter Nominees, and what its memorandum allowed

The archive records a sequel, offered explicitly as opinion: "It is the opinion of one observer that when they uncovered what happened with David Green and Four Millbank Nominees they established a company called 'Great Peter Nominees' to acquire the shares of Four Millbank Nominees."

The corporate detail given is precise. Great Peter Nominees was formed in 1977 but "only acquired the shares of Four Millbank Nominees in 1991 by special resolution, as the Crown Agents had ceased trading by that stage and were not obliged to submit reports to their auditors."

And the difference that gives the story its point: "The Memorandum of Articles of Great Peter Nominees are the same as Four Millbank Nominees, save that this company could hold or manage assets or securities."

So an entity whose articles forbade the holding of assets was replaced, fourteen years later, by an entity with near-identical articles that permitted it. The archive does not say what Great Peter Nominees subsequently held.

Sindona, "St Peter's Banker", and the name

One observation is recorded with a question attached rather than a conclusion: "Michele Sindona was referred to as the 'Vatican's Banker' or 'St Peter's Banker,' raising a question about the name Great Peter Nominees."

The archive leaves it as a question. It offers no document connecting Sindona to Great Peter Nominees, and none establishing who chose the name or why. Sindona's own note in this brain is largely an extracted index of names rather than a narrative, so the cluster cannot answer it either.

Cuckney and the Whitehall network

The archive records that "Sir John Cuckney swept the skeletons out of the Crown Agents cupboard", describing him as "a one time Lazard's Director" who "cut his connections with the Anglo Eastern Bank after he became a temporary civil servant at the Property Services Agency to work for the Crown Agents", and who "later became a director with Thomas Cook".

It then widens: "A secret network of power brokers controlling the supply of British Aid, Trade and Arms to overseas companies has operated like an alternative government since the early 1980's. The investigation by the Independent, 16 March 1994, details directors and members of this exclusive White Hall Club."

And a financial mechanism: "In addition to aid, many other contracts are supported by soft loans and underwriting facilities from the Export Credit Guarantee Department." None of those contracts are identified in this corpus.

The bonds themselves: CUSIP 912810 BU1

The instruments are identified: "B-Series bonds i.e. 912810 BU1 is 1975 – 1980".

The same series is described elsewhere in the archive in terms that connect it to unclaimed funds: "There are two unclaimed CUSIPS of $4,224 billion from 1975 at 8¼% interest."

That figure and that rate correspond to the Exchange Stabilization Fund's 8.25 per cent note, CUSIP 912810BU1, which appears elsewhere in this archive with $4,224 million outstanding — the same number, with the unit written differently in the two places. Whether the archive means $4,224 million or $4,224 billion, it is describing the same issue, and the correspondence is close enough to be worth flagging rather than smoothing over.

Bankers Trust's role is given as more than custodial: "Bankers Trust, custodial bank for unclaimed client's money, applied the funds for own account, and after applications for redemption in 1997, leased the same to Alex Brown, and reverse restructured into Deutsche Bank in 1999, where Deutsche Bank Alex Brown surfaced in 2000."

The archive's framing of the whole operation is a single sentence: "Evidence would suggest that an orchestrated plan engineered the quadrupling of the oil price, and the birth of the debt system, a cross that 3rd world countries still bear." That is an assertion about cause on a scale no document here could carry.

The FOIA request and the judicial review

The archive records an attempt to obtain David Green's fiscal records: "A Freedom of Information FOIA/Privacy Act request was made for the Estate of late David Green in 1994 as the statement of affairs previously prepared in October 1993 was denied. The request included information related to David Green's fiscal records and relationship to Alliance Dollar Reserve."

The refusal and what followed: "the Bureau of Public Debt response states that disclosure would impede an investigation, may cause harm to the investigating authority or requester. The information is sensitive, and disclosure would cause harm, embarrassment or reprisal."

Then the order: "Judicial review by the Appellate Review Board of Bureau of Public Debt on 17 November 1994 granted in camera inspection to the requester, with expiry on 17 November 1996."

Two years of in camera access, ending in November 1996. The archive states that between 1995 and 1996 "Charter Trading Corp., represented by Col. Comee, entered into 2 agreements with the Estate of David Green for settlement in exchange for a Deed of Release, none of which was realised", and that "By December 1996, there was a great sigh of relief in the Crown, according to Patrick Kelly."

Patrick Kelly is named as the source of that remark and of nothing else in this corpus.

The 1997 thread: a limited power of attorney in Houston

Separately, and twenty-three years after the collapse list, Texas Commerce Bank appears in a running summary of calls and meetings between 15 April and 2 June 1997 with a man introduced as Charles T Pessara, known as "Chris", at Mole Cottage, Inanda Club, Johannesburg.

Pessara is described as twenty-eight years with the CIA in Africa, retired, a contracts employee from 1966, who "infiltrated the Mob" carrying Treasury bills for Frank Lorenzo, sent by his former superior Travis, one of the people who ran black operations.

The bank appears procedurally: "Texas Commerce Bank are going to lock down the asset with Citibank in Houston at the International Dept. with Ed Pero", and "Chemical Bank were going to transfer the asset to an account at Texas Commerce Bank - transaction to run for a period of one year and one month."

Pessara proposes himself as agent: "Chris proposes he has been asked to be JS's agent with Texas Commerce Bank with limited Power of Attorney." His brother, John A Pessara of Aim Management Corporation, is recorded as "Texas Commerce Bank in Houston, involved". A Deed of Release sent to the bank was returned on 18 July 1997.

The stated purpose is not ordinary banking: "Chris, as a federal employee, will turn it back to the US Treasury as an undeclared and lost asset", and "Chris is there to protect CIA interest". The archive's own running commentary marks most commitments as undelivered — "No report received", "Still outstanding".

The tone is caught in a line attributed to "T": "JS has not got us by ransom, but he's got us by the balls because if all this comes out we're standing here with egg on our face."

And the $140 billion Riyadh programme

One passage ties the Crown Agents story to the archive's wider Saudi material: "the industrialization program of $140 billion in Riyadh provided Bechtel the relief necessary after financial problems with leaking nuclear reactors and the US the export of goods and services. Half a dozen knowledgeable individuals had in essence ignited the international monetary system and recycled Dollars back to the US."

The same passage describes SAMA's portfolio being built through First National City Bank, Chase Manhattan, Morgan Guaranty and Chemical Bank, with advisers seconded from White Weld and Barings, and identifies the B-Series bonds as running 1975 to 1980 against that programme.

What is wrong in the archive

The claim that Texas Commerce Bank collapsed in August 1974 cannot be sustained, and the archive refutes it itself. Its own 1997 documents describe the bank as owned by Chemical Bank, and separately as "Texas Commerce Bank - Chase Manhattan, the Burston Group and Houston". Chemical acquired Texas Commerce in 1987; Chemical merged with Chase Manhattan in 1996. A bank acquired in 1987 did not collapse in 1974.

The "owned by Burston Group / Crown Agents" label is an indexer's phrase and conflicts with the primary material on the same page. It may record an association the indexer believed existed; it does not record an ownership the documents evidence.

Franklin National's failure is real but dated October 1974, not August, and it was European American that acquired it — both facts the archive supplies correctly elsewhere.

The "two unclaimed CUSIPS of $4,224 billion" line cannot be read literally. The 8¼ per cent 1975 issue it describes was $4,224 million outstanding, not billions. The archive has conflated a figure with its unit.

The likeliest explanation for the Texas Commerce entry is that a list of 1974 casualties was compiled from memory and a familiar bank name substituted. That is this note's inference and is labelled as such.

What this thought is and is not

It is a filing decision with a substantial evidentiary base: a five-bank list, an August 1974 timeline, a documented exchange-control allegation, a named nominee company whose articles forbade holding assets, a successor company whose articles permitted it, a CUSIP, a Red Book entry number, a judicial review with two dates, and a set of 1997 meetings about a Houston account.

It is not evidence that Texas Commerce Bank was complicit in anything. In the 1974 material it is a name in a list with no described role beyond an ownership attribution. In the 1997 material it is an account where a settlement was proposed, named by a third party in meetings the bank was not part of. No record, statement, letter or filing from Texas Commerce Bank itself appears anywhere in this corpus.

What is not established

No document records that Texas Commerce Bank collapsed, was insolvent, or was rescued. The 1997 documents contradict the 1974 list directly.

No document evidences Burston Group or Crown Agents ownership of Texas Commerce Bank.

Nothing records whether the 1997 Houston account was opened, whether the power of attorney was granted, or whether any transaction occurred.

David Green's intelligence role rests on "unofficial" confirmation and a US Marshal's characterisation reported second-hand. No document establishes it.

The Great Peter Nominees account is offered by the archive as "the opinion of one observer", not as a finding. The formation date and the 1991 special resolution may be checkable at Companies House; this corpus does not reproduce the filings.

The connection between Sindona's "St Peter's Banker" nickname and the name Great Peter Nominees is a question the archive raises and does not answer.

The link between the Crown Agents concealment and the 1976 appointment of a CIA director is an assertion in the same paragraph, not a documented connection.

The Bureau of Public Debt's fraud concern is referenced but not reproduced, and the content of the in camera inspection granted in November 1994 is not in this corpus.

The Crown Agents Tribunal findings are cited repeatedly; no finding is quoted anywhere here.

The general institutional history of Texas Commerce Bank is not in this corpus and is not reconstructed.

Provenance

Where to read further

The 1974 material belongs with Franklin National Bank and Michele Sindona, whose note here is largely an extracted index of names, and with the Crown Agents Tribunal Report, cited but not quoted.

The 1997 material belongs with the Green File summary documents.

The B-Series bond material connects to the Exchange Stabilization Fund documents elsewhere in the archive, where the same CUSIP appears with a documented redemption.

Beyond this corpus the checkable items are the Four Millbank Nominees and Great Peter Nominees filings at Companies House, the Crown Agents Tribunal Report, and the Independent investigation of 16 March 1994.