If you want to learn WHY Bill and Hillary Clinton are so close to Wall Street...

[Octafish]

26. The late Bert Lance, OMB Director for President Carter, liberal Democrat...

...got poisoned by the BCCI Octopus. Favors and such for connected big wigs and pols was the way the bank operated.

Lance Admits Playing Key BCCI Role

The former Carter Administration official says he advised the bank's founder on how to expand operations into the United States.

October 24, 1991|OSWALD JOHNSTON | LOS ANGELES TIMES STAFF WRITER

EXCERPT...

Lance said he first asked his Washington counsel, Clark M. Clifford, to determine Abedi's integrity. After a quick inquiry turned up no apparent problems, Lance proposed that Clifford and his protege, Robert Altman, become legal advisers to Abedi and BCCI in their prospective U.S. operations.

BCCI then proceeded with its attempt to acquire the Washington-based bank holding company, Financial General Bankshares, Lance said. It succeeded in acquiring the company, renamed First American Bankshares, through intermediaries three years later.

Clifford and Altman, who resigned under pressure last August as chairman and president of First American, have steadfastly insisted that they had no idea BCCI was the actual owner of their bank. Both are scheduled to testify before the subcommittee today.

Lance also testified that Abedi, whom he said he admired in those early years as a banker with an abiding commitment to Third World development, put him in touch with Saudi millionaire Ghaith Pharaon as a buyer for his own bank, National Bank of Georgia, of which Lance was a 12% shareholder. The Federal Reserve has since charged that Pharaon acquired the bank while acting as a front man for BCCI.

Lance said Clifford and Altman were closely involved with Pharaon's acquisition of NBG and the attempt by BCCI to acquire Financial General, an effort that was challenged in 1978 by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve Board on grounds that intermediaries were being used to complete the sale. When many of those same intermediaries secretly acquired First American, Clifford and Altman assured the Fed that BCCI had no role in the acquisition.

The subcommittee made public a Jan. 30, 1978, cable to Abedi from Abdus Sami, one of his top aides, outlining how Clifford had been consulted on acquisition strategy from the start of BCCI's move into U.S. banking. It said "our friend"--Lance--recommended Clifford as "chief counsel" and added: "Accordingly, I met Mr. Clark Clifford and explained to him our strategy and goals. He was happy to know the details and has blessed the acquisition."

CONTINUED...

http://articles.latimes.com/1991-10-24/business/fi-455_1_united-states

Of course, with lawyers racking up $400 an hour tabs, Just Us would be served, small fish fried and big fish got to eat another day, and BCCI slipped into the dustbin of forgotten lore.