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Abbas Gokal

Fraudster

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 17, 2025
Entity authorityQ16929593 ↗
Source-derived summary

Abbas Kasimali Gokal (Urdu: عباس ‎گوکل; born in February 1936) is a British Pakistani businessman and fraudster who was chairman of the Gulf Shipping Lines. Gokal was convicted of fraud in May 1997 and sentenced to 14 years in prison. He was charged with defrauding the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) of US$1.2 billion and was the world's biggest single fraudster at the time. His company, the Gulf Group, was the BCCI's single largest borrower.

Early life

Abbas Gokal was born in February 1936, in the erstwhile British India. He was born into a Shia family. During the Partition of India, the Gokal family moved to Iraq. When the Iraqi monarchy was overthrown, the Gokal family moved to Karachi, Pakistan. Gokal had brothers; Mustafa and Murtaza Gokal.

Gulf International Holdings

The three brothers: Abbas, Mustafa and Murtaza Gokal, had set up the Gulf Group (officially Gulf International Holdings) in Karachi.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Abbas Gokal” is fraudster. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Abbas, Gokal and Fraudster, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1936, 1997—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1936. For this dossier, Abbas, Gokal and Fraudster is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “fraudster” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q16929593. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1936 and 1997.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Abbas Gokal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.