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- BUSINESS, Page 69Business NotesSCANDALSGone for Good -- or Is It?
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- The Federal Reserve Board is pushing the scandal-tainted
- Bank of Credit & Commerce International -- or at least those
- parts it can find -- out of the U.S. Under Fed pressure, the
- Luxembourg-based bank, which pleaded guilty in 1990 to
- laundering millions in drug money, agreed last week to close
- its U.S. offices and give up its previously hidden interest in
- First American, a Washington-based bank holding company.
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- The move signals mounting troubles for First American's top
- officers, longtime Washington power broker Clark Clifford and
- his law partner Robert Altman. They have been telling bank
- regulators for the past decade that BCCI did not control or
- hold any financial interest in First American. But it seems
- BCCI may have still other U.S. operations. Federal
- investigators are probing its links to Independence Bank, which
- is in Encino, Calif., and owned by Saudi millionaire Ghaith
- Pharaon, who has been involved in complex banking transactions
- with BCCI. In one, he purchased the National Bank of Georgia
- for $18 million and nine years later sold it, along with two
- small Florida banks, to First American for $200 million -- a
- deal regulators are re-examining.
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