Nugan Hand’s abuse of bank status to manipulate international money transfers extended to siphoning millions of dollars of deposits from US servicemen, during the 1970s and into 1980. Kwitny’s case is convincing that investor influence by retired US military top brass working as regional representatives in Nugan Hand branch offices was what enticed most US servicemen into making deposits, thereby losing life savings when the bank collapsed in 1980.
US citizens contracted to work overseas, especially in Saudi Arabia, also lost life-savings from the bank’s collapse, due to the deposits they entrusted to Nugan Hand through its principal representative visiting the Middle East, Bernie Houghton.
“The Crimes of Patriots” details how Houghton and Hand came together in Sydney, linked up with Frank Nugan, then organized activities to profit from supply of services to US military activity in the region. This extended to exploiting individual US servicemen, first in the sale of sea-side investment property, then onto an ambitious scheme to take their life-savings in bank deposits. The scheme targeted US servicemen all around Asia/Pacific and included Hawaii and the US mainland.
Nugan, Hand and Houghton turned to retired US generals. Admirals and other top brass to employ or commission as the salesmen, presented in high-sounding titles like bank president and regional representative.
Kwitny’s book has an “Afterword” [it’s many words] of self-justification by Admiral Yates on behalf of “THE TRUE PATRIOTS” – himself and the numerous retired US top brass who aided Nugan Hand’s deposit-taking.
Kwitny’s comment on the Americans’ self-justification that Nugan Hand had duped them was abrupt: “Once inside the bank, how dumb would you have to be to stay duped? Could that level of stupidity be ascribed to officials who only recently were responsible for supervising billions of dollars of US taxpayer funds – hundreds of thousands of troops and whole fleets of aircraft and aircraft carriers, who specialized in, of all things, ‘intelligence’?”