While John Kerry has yet to prove he is sufficiently popular in the US to win this year's race to the White House, the Democratic hopeful who last week won the Iowa caucus already has a loyal following in one small corner of London – court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice. The place where Lord Hutton last year conducted his inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, the UK scientist, is now home to the unprecedented claim of misfeasance against the Bank of England made by the creditors of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).

When the rogue bank was closed down owing £5.4bn in 1991, Senator Kerry led a Congressional investigation into its activities. His 1992 report detailed not only corruption within BCCI and alleged failure of its regulators, but its covert collusion with government agencies around the world. His determined inquiries – he bumped up against lots of powerful friends and allies of BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi – helped force into the open material proving useful to the bank's creditors. Not that these creditors are likely to get any early satisfaction from their High Court action: the case before Mr Justice Tomlinson is expected to run for at least a year. Its slow progress was acknowledged last week by the creditors' leading counsel, Gordon Pollock QC. He paused during an opening statement by then already a week long to say: "We are only at step three of a 1,000-mile journey, my Lord." Mr Justice Tomlinson drily replied: "I didn't realise we had got that far, Mr Pollock." Kerry is likely to know his fate at the hands of the US electorate long before the depositors who years ago put their money into BCCI.