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Bank of Credit and Commerce International (view source)
Revision as of 19:51, October 31, 2016
, 19:51, October 31, 2016→Stephens Inc and the Riadys'
The bank was called First American Bankshares and became the largest in [[Washington DC]]. Robert Morgenthau, the district attorney in [[New York City]], disclosed that his office had found evidence that the parent company of Clifford's bank was secretly controlled by BCCI. The district attorney convened a grand jury to determine whether Clifford and his partner, Robert A. Altman, had deliberately misled federal regulators when the two men assured them that BCCI would have no control.<ref>Summary of Charges, US Board of Governors of the [[Federal Reserve]], No. 91-043, July 29, 1992, pp. 1-11.</ref>
The bank was called First American Bankshares and became the largest in [[Washington DC]]. Robert Morgenthau, the district attorney in [[New York City]], disclosed that his office had found evidence that the parent company of Clifford's bank was secretly controlled by BCCI. The district attorney convened a grand jury to determine whether Clifford and his partner, Robert A. Altman, had deliberately misled federal regulators when the two men assured them that BCCI would have no control.<ref>Summary of Charges, US Board of Governors of the [[Federal Reserve]], No. 91-043, July 29, 1992, pp. 1-11.</ref>
===Bert Lance and Clark Clifford===
Both First American National Bank and Georgia National Bank, owned by Bert Lance, were purchased by BCCI front man and Stephens business associate Gaith Pharon. Stephens' family bank, the [[Worthern National Bank]] (later renamed Boatman's National Bank of Arkansas),<ref>http://www.ffiec.gov/nicpubweb/nicweb/InstitutionHistory.aspx?parID_RSSD=883249&parDT_END=99991231</ref> extended a two million dollar loan to the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign.
Stephens was named in the court records as having brought Pharon together with Stephens' close friend Bert Lance. Lance was a former [[OMB]] nominee under President [[Jimmy Carter]] who was denied confirmation due to a banking scandal.
BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi was introduced to Bert Lance by Stephens. Lance asked Clifford to perform [[due diligence]] on BCCI.<ref>BCCI IN THE UNITED STATES, 1992."According to [Bert] Lance, he then turned to Clark Clifford, who had represented him in Congressional hearings into Lance's activities in [[Georgia]], and asked Clifford to do due diligence on BCCI. When Clifford called Lance back to tell Lance that Abedi was "a man of integrity and character," Lance agreed to meet with Abedi and Naqvi in [[London]], and there became BCCI's agent for its forays into the U.S.(15) Thus, by Lance's account, Clifford first had contact with BCCI on behalf of Lance in October, 1977."</ref> Stephens, Lance, and First American Bank director and longtime Democratic party power broker Clark Clifford all maintained that they did not know the group of Pakinstani and Saudi investors headed by Pharon, which they were dealing with, were actually fronting for BCCI.<ref>http://fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/06early.htm</ref>
Clifford, who was 82 at the time and a figurehead who lent his name to give it an air of legitimacy, predicament worsened when it was disclosed he had made about $6 million in [[profits]] from bank stock that he bought with an [[unsecured]] [[loan]] from BCCI. A New York [[grand jury]] handed up indictments, as did the [[Justice Department]]. Clifford's assets in New York, where he kept most of his investments, were frozen.
The "Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations United States Senate" led by Senators [[John Kerry]] and Hank Brown noted that a key strategy of "BCCI's successful secret acquisitions of U.S. banks in the face of regulatory suspicion was its aggressive use of a series of prominent Americans," Clifford among them.<ref>[http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/ The BCCI Affair], A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, 102d Congress 2d Session Senate, December 1992.</ref> Clifford, who prided himself on decades of meticulously ethical civic conduct, summed his predicament up when he told a reporter from the ''New York Times'', "I have a choice of either seeming stupid or venal." Indictments against Clifford had been set aside because of his failing health.
===Stephens Inc and the Riadys'===
===Stephens Inc and the Riadys'===