Michael Hand Found Living in the United States
November 14th, 2015Via: Sydney Morning Herald:
One of Australia’s most wanted fugitives, Michael Hand, the co-founder of the Sydney-based international merchant bank Nugan Hand, has been found alive and well and living in small-town America.
He vanished in 1980 amid rumours of CIA and organised crime involvement in the bank as the United States attempted to back anti-communist governments and anti-communist insurgents at the height of the Cold War.
…
Over the years, the two words Nugan Hand became shorthand for drug-dealing, gun-running, organised crime and clandestine intelligence activities.
But nobody has been convicted. Governments, security and espionage agencies ran dead or appeared to look the other way. Many men associated with the bank’s affairs in Australia, the US and Asia have died early or in mysterious circumstances.
The most problematic death was William Colby’s. Director of the CIA between 1972 and 1976 as the US wound down its involvement in Vietnam, Colby became a legal adviser to the Nugan Hand bank. He was found face-down in the water after leaving his Maryland home on a solo canoe trip in 1996.
Butt thought Hand had been protected since fleeing Australia in June 1980.
“It turns out that the FBI could have dealt with Michael Hand long ago. A simple background check reveals Fuller’s social security number is identical to the one allocated to Michael Hand in New York in 1960,” he said.
“The fact that Hand has been allowed to live the free life in the United States suggests that he belongs to a protected species, most likely of the intelligence kind. Indeed, an intelligence document I found places Michael Hand back working for the CIA in Central America 18 months after his disappearance.”
Book: Merchants of Menace: The True Story of the Nugan Hand Bank Scandal by Peter Butt
Research Credit: almaverdad2
