On Feb. 27, 1995, a Swiss lawyer filled out an application to open a Citibank account in Geneva for an obscure company from the British Virgin Islands known as Capricorn Trading.

The handwritten document identified the company's owner as Asif Ali Zardari and listed his address as Bilawal House, Karachi, Pakistan.

Opening the account was the sort of discreet service performed daily by Citibank's private banking department, which prides itself on ''white gloved'' treatment of well-placed clients, many of them from poor, politically unstable countries in the third world. But Mr. Zardari was no ordinary client and this was no ordinary account. Although his application did not say so, he was the husband of Pakistan's Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto. The address on the form was her personal residence, so well known in Pakistan, and to most of those doing business with Pakistan, that it was akin to writing ''Hillary Clinton, The White House.''

At the time, Pakistani investigators say, Mr. Zardari was amassing a fortune of more than $100 million in bank deposits and luxury properties abroad, much of it bought with payoffs from foreign companies doing business in Pakistan. The largest single portion -- more than $40 million -- coursed through Citibank account No. 342034, according to the investigators.