U.S. Goes Easy on U.S. Bank Manager Once Accused of Hiding Drug $$$

A Tale of Two Fugitives: Life on the Run Works Out for BCCI Official, but Not Roman Polanski

By BRIAN ROSS, VIC WALTER, RHONDA SCHWARTZ and RICHARD ESPOSITO

Oct. 28, 2009

For Roman Polanski, life as a fugitive has led to the worst of times.

Why is Roman Polanski in a Swedish jail while crooked banker Saad Shafi is free?For the manager of a major Los Angeles bank, however, life as a fugitive had led to the best of times including a California home, a big bank job and U.S. citizenship.

Saad Shafi fled the country for Pakistan in 1988 after being indicted by a federal grand jury on charges he and other executives at the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, BCCI, helped Colombia drug bosses and Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega hide millions in drug money.

Polanski pleaded guilty to charges of having sex with a 13-year old girl and fled the country in 1978 prior to sentencing.

By 2005, he had been granted U.S. citizenship and gone back to work in the American banking industry.

ABC News found Shafi working as the manager of the Los Angeles branch of Habib American bank, an FDIC insured institution chartered and headquartered in New York.

"He is not a fit person to run a bank," said Jack Blum, who investigated BCCI for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "Banks should be run by people of good moral character."

In a brief interview, to be broadcast tonight on ABC World News with Charles Gibson, Shafi confirmed he was the same man indicted by the grand jury and labeled a fugitive for 11 years.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/us-dismis ... id=8931066