Released in June 1985 to the commissioning Australian Federal Government and State of New South Wales (NSW), the two-volume report into Nugan Hand by the Stewart Commission was supposed to thoroughly track-down leads begun by the previous official investigations, starting with the NSW Corporate Affairs Commission, the bank’s official Sydney and Hong Kong liquidators, also a Joint Federal/NSW Task Force report findings about Nugan Hand’s connections with drug dealers and the CIA.
The NSW Corporate Affairs report had described the sales team in which the Americans became a big part: “What apparently began as an attempt to solicit deposits and reinvest the funds attracted thereby to produce a profit margin for the benefit of the entrepreneurs appears to have developed, through uncontrolled expansion of the sales force and unchecked escalation of expenses, into an unstructured, fund devouring, loss incurring, enterprise.”
The Stewart Commission concurred with the earlier official reports that thousands of investors in the US and Australia lost their life savings as a result of the bank's collapse. But concerning suspects whom Corporate Affairs and other officials associated with Nugan Hand Bank, Stewart decided instead to accept contrary statements given by the Americans. As a result, the Commission’s finding was that not one of them had a case to answer.
This included all the retired US generals and intelligence agents, all of whom testified that they had performed Nugan Hand duties honourably having no knowledge of the since-proven fraudulent practices of the bank.
The men gave witness that Nugan Hand had duped them into accepting employment or commission work for the bank. Some including one-time bank president, retired US Admiral Yates, insisted that Nugan Hand had desired their services to advance potential trade development deals. He wanted the commission to believe it incidental how he got into recruiting the other “true patriots” as Nugan Hand regional representatives taking deposits from US servicemen.
On the looting and destruction of bank documents, Stewart held neither American accountable whose involvement had been proven by previous investigations. Hand and Australian local Patricia Swan, Nugan's secretary, were the only ones accused for the shredding of documents. But no convictions ever followed.
Excused from blame across the whole of Nugan Hand’s activities were the bank’s president Rear-Admiral Earl P. Yates; its paid legal advisor William Colby; Generals Leroy J. Manor and Edwin F. Black; also Walter J. McDonald, Dale C. Holmgren, Guy J. Pauker and Bernie Houghton – all considered blameless.
Kwitny was outraged that even Bernie Houghton had no case to answer, writing: “Judging from the victims’ letters, as O’Brien [the Sydney liquidator] perused them, Bernie Houghton had actually gone around with a big plastic garbage bag slung over one shoulder, like some kind of reverse Santa Claus, taking bundles of cash savings from Americans serving overseas, mostly in Saudi Arabia. Whatever else Nugan Hand was, it was surely a giant theft machine.
“Big and little victims all over Southeast Asia wrote in that they had given money to the staff at Nugan Hand. But liquidator O’Brien found no records of their accounts among the bank’s files – or in some case, he would find only a puzzling reference to the depositor in the records of some related company”.
“The depositors were told their savings would be invested in the high-interest commercial banking instruments. But instead, the money seemed to just disappear. General Manor [Philippines Regional Representative] collected checks from his former subordinate officers at the US air bases he used to command, and delivered them back Nugan Hand certificates of deposit. These certificates were now next to worthless. Other depositors had donated their cash in various ways around the world.”
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