Word: awan
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Just as Pharaon came to CenTrust's aid, so members of Washington's power elite have frequently gone to bat for B.C.C.I. Jack Blum, the former chief investigator for Kerry's subcommittee, stunned the hearing last week by declaring that Altman and Clifford advised Amjad Awan, a B.C.C.I. official who had run the bank's Panama office, to flee the U.S. for Paris in 1988 to avoid a congressional subpoena. Altman, a fast-rising star in Washington legal and social circles, then reportedly arranged for B.C.C.I. to transfer Awan to Paris. But Carl Rauh, an attorney for Clifford and Altman...
...case, Awan stayed put in 1988 and was arrested by law-enforcement officers investigating the bank's U.S. money-laundering operations. The hapless Awan, who had been personal banker to Noriega and others, was convicted of money-laundering charges with four other B.C.C.I. officers in Tampa last year and sentenced to 12 years in prison...
...B.C.C.I.'s influence grew, a corrupt core of middle management evolved, described by bank employees as "100 entrepreneurs," usually branch officers in foreign countries who were free to pursue their own agendas. One such was Amjad Awan, the B.C.C.I. officer who was convicted in Florida for the money- laundering services he provided for Noriega. As long as these remote managers kept on gathering deposits, they were given wide latitude to do as they pleased, which increasingly meant serving a core clientele of what investigators estimate to be some 3,500 corrupt business people around the world...
...Awan's statements are only part of the evidence of B.C.C.I.'s ties to First American that has remained buried for a remarkably long time despite being held by the government. None of the evidence has been forwarded to banking regulators, who might have done something about...
...Awan was one of five B.C.C.I. officers later convicted of conspiring to launder cocaine cash and sentenced to 12 years in prison, but he did not testify at his trial. Nor did the government play his taped conversation for the jury. For its part, B.C.C.I. forfeited the $15 million that agents had deposited but was not required to pay additional penalties...