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Time - Man of the Year
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Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso
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081092
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1993-04-08
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THE WEEK, Page 12NATIONAn Icon Falls in The B.C.C.I. Scandal
Clark Clifford is indicted as a front for the notorious bank
The Bank of Credit & Commerce International has cost
depositors around the world billions in losses, ensnared
officials in scores of countries in corrupt money-laundering
schemes and acted like a government unto itself. Now its criminal
operations have led to the indictment of an 85-year-old man with
a reputation for rectitude and a distinguished five-decade
career. New York State and federal authorities have charged Clark
Clifford, the patrician lawyer who has counseled every
Democratic U.S. President since Harry Truman, and his
partner-protege, Robert Altman, with conspiracy to defraud by
helping B.C.C.I. secretly buy and control two large U.S. banks.
In a parallel move, the Federal Reserve announced that it has
started a civil action against the pair. Clifford faces up to
nine years and Altman up to 31 years in prison, as well as
millions in fines and penalties, if convicted. They vehemently
denied the charges as "meanspirited" and based wholly on
"circumstantial evidence."
Simultaneous probes by the office of New York District
Attorney Robert Morgenthau, the Justice Department and the
Federal Reserve indicate that Clifford, as chairman of First
American, and Altman, as president, acted as knowing front men
for B.C.C.I. founder Agha Hasan Abedi, falsifying documents and
lying to authorities. The two are also charged with using First
American's 1987 purchase of National Bank of Georgia as a
vehicle for transferring huge and unmerited profits to B.C.C.I.,
all under Abedi's direction.
Why would they do it? The civil and criminal actions
suggest one answer: $32 million in cash and stock awarded to
Clifford and Altman in a sweetheart transaction engineered by
Abedi and concealed by the two from the Fed and even their own
board of directors. The prosecutors allege the deal was a bribe,
as was part of the $17 million their law firm charged as legal
counsel for B.C.C.I. and First American.
The federal and state indictments bring new breadth and
scope to the image of B.C.C.I. as a huge criminal enterprise
that corrupted bank officers, government officials and
journalists. Criminal counts against the bank, shut down by
regulators last July, included specific allegations that
B.C.C.I. bribed government and banking officials in 10
countries. A B.C.C.I. director, Sheik Kamal Adham, last week
became the second prominent Saudi to be caught up in the
scandal; last month Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz, head of the
largest commercial bank in Saudi Arabia, was indicted in New
York.