An Icon Falls in The B.C.C.I. Scandal

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. (See related story on page 40.)