Merchants of Menace: The True Story of the Nugan Hand Bank Scandal

Guns, drug money and the CIA… These were not your average bankers. This was not your average bank. In 1980, following the mysterious death of Australian merchant banker, Frank Nugan, his New York-born partner, Michael Hand, brazenly ordered the destruction of the bank’s records. Hand then disappeared from Sydney and hasn’t been seen since. Among the ruins of the Nugan Hand global financial empire, investigators uncovered astonishing evidence of gunrunning, money laundering for drug traffickers and connections to the CIA. When the FBI and a Royal Commission failed to join the dots, those intimately involved with the case suspected a cover up. Brimming with chilling new evidence and powerful testimonies, Merchants of Menace cracks open the sensational Nugan Hand story and goes on the hunt for the world’s most elusive corporate fugitive… The FBI integrated me on behalf of the Australians. The agents asked what I knew about the Nugan Hand bank and what happened to Frank Nugan. I said ‘I don’t know. But whatever it was, it was the lynchpin that started everything crumbling.’ He kept saying, ‘Do you know where Michael Hand is?’ and I said, ‘No’ He said. ‘Are you sure?’ Finally I said to him, ‘Look, why don’t you ask the CIA in Langley Virginia and maybe they will tell you where he is, because they know.’ I don’t think they were really looking for Michael and they certainly weren’t going to tell the Australian government where he was.” pp. 298 iilusts #1219 TRUE CRIME AUSTRALIA. SCARCE