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35 Crime L. & Soc. Change 1 (2001)

handle is hein.journals/crmlsc35 and id is 1 raw text is: A Crime, Law & Social Change 5: 1-5, 2001. 1 W © 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. Introduction Dedicated to David Whitby (1931-1999) My friend DAVID WHITBY died in the late spring of 1999 in Somerset, Eng- land. Left unfinished was his manuscript on British banking regulation, or more often non-regulation, called The Blind Old Lady. David had laboured long and hard on this project and had asked me to work with him in 1996. I was desultory, he was not. I did finally give him a rather long chapter dealing with certain bankers who were also oil traders, members of what I dubbed the Serious Crime Community. However, I was of the opinion that David's work was unique in style and tone, and that mine jarred with his. Nonetheless we kept at it for a while. My wife, Constance Weaver, and I stayed with David in his place in Devon several times. He stayed at our home in State College, Pennsylvania, for five weeks in the spring of 1997. He was the most extraordinary man - funny, irreverent, kind, interesting, wordly, tough and generous. For well over four years I saw England through David's eyes as we travelled far and wide usually in his small old car with his elderly King Charles Cava- lier Spaniel, Holly, curled up in the back, stopping often at splendid pubs for David was often dry. David became my best friend and a teacher of matters arcane. I miss him every day and thought to share some of his work with readers of this journal. This is not simply sentiment gone awry. David had much to say about banking around the world including the BCCI scandal and the failure of the Bank of England's regulatory responsibilities among others. His primary interests included the following: The Bank of England (the Blind Old Lady) and the flakey performance of the most secretive department within the Bank - the Banking Supervi- sion and Surveillance Division. The Bank's role in law enforcement and intelligence gathering in the context of international organised crime, money laundering, and offshore banking. The conspiracy between the British Government (HM Treasury and the Foreign Office) and the Bank of England to conceal the financing of British and foreign government exports of arms to Iran-Iraq etc. through the London money market.