Word: altmans
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Clifford and law partner Robert Altman, who is First American's president, are now under scrutiny by a New York grand jury seeking to determine whether the pair were knowing front men for one of the most ingenious bank tycoons of the modern age: B.C.C.I.'s founder, Agha Hasan Abedi of Pakistan. Clifford and Altman insist they were not, despite long and close connections. They were attorneys for B.C.C.I. from 1978 through 1990, as well as attorneys for First American, billing the two banks for more than $1 million during that period. Clifford, who has long defended Abedi, says...
Clifford and Altman are not the only U.S. connections to B.C.C.I. that the New York grand jury is looking into. Investigators suspect that wealthy Saudi businessman Ghaith Pharaon, who purchased the troubled National Bank of Georgia from President Carter's friend and onetime budget chief Bert Lance and later sold it to First American, has been a front man for Abedi. Banking regulators are probing another Pharaon holding -- Independence Bank in Encino, Calif. -- to see if Abedi or B.C.C.I. is the secret owner of that bank. And a federal grand jury in Miami is tracking Pharaon's and B.C.C.I...
Investigations in Washington, New York City and Florida are probing deeper into the bizarre affair and uncovering evidence of startling regulatory inaction, if not political chicanery. Clifford, 84, says he and his law partner Robert Altman, president of the bank, "have run First American for long years at the highest ethical level, and we are proud of our stewardship." But he acknowledged to TIME that he has retained a criminal- defense attorney to represent him in connection with the matter...
...nervous Federal Reserve officials that the buyers were ! acting as individuals on their own behalf. When questioned about B.C.C.I.'s financial role in the acquisition, Clifford flatly told the officials that there wasn't any. Clifford became chairman of the bank, renamed First American, and his law partner, Robert Altman, became president. Clifford regularly briefed Abedi on the U.S. firm's operations. When queried on the briefings, Clifford explained that B.C.C.I. as adviser to the Arab owners of First American needed to know about the banking company...
...Kerry's chief counsel. One provided details of B.C.C.I.'s money-laundering operations in the U.S. and Latin America. The B.C.C.I. executive described a B.C.C.I. management conference in Vienna at which Abedi openly displayed charts of B.C.C.I. holdings that included First American. This senior-level manager said Clifford and Altman were at the meeting...