First American Bank

First American Bank was a bank based in Washington, D.C., which became secretly owned and controlled by the BCCI.¹

Acquisition and BCCI Control

First American Bank was acquired by Middle Eastern investors connected with BCCI in 1981, following the acquisition of Financial General Bankshares.¹ Clark Clifford and Robert Altman served as BCCI's chief American counsel and later as chairman and president of First American Bank, respectively.¹ They were instrumental in concealing BCCI's secret ownership through a network of nominees and fraudulent loans.²

BCCI used nominees to secretly purchase shares in CCAH, the holding company that owned First American Bank.³ The bank's assets grew significantly, but it also faced deepening financial woes due to a disastrous real estate portfolio.⁴

Legal and Regulatory Scrutiny

The CIA issued a report in 1986 stating that BCCI had owned First American Bank since 1982.¹ The Federal Reserve Board later fined BCCI $200 million for illegally acquiring control of First American Bank, along with National Bank of Georgia and CenTrust Savings Bank.¹

In July 1992, Clifford and Altman were indicted by a New York City grand jury on charges of bribery and fraud related to their involvement with BCCI and First American Bank.¹

BCCI Officers and Expansion

After the purchase BCCI added 30 million dollars in capital to First American and its holding company, partly from deposits of the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and partly from BCCI loans to its nominees Faisal Saud al-Fulaij, Khalil and Shorafa. The Bank of Commerce, Financial General's former New York bank, refused to join First American, which then built a New York bank from scratch; there BCCI placed its own officials, K.K. Elley and Aijaz Afridi, who continued to draw BCCI benefits, Elley obtaining his post in 1983 after Swaleh Naqvi told Robert Altman to hire him. A BCCI memorandum of July 25, 1983, from Afridi to Naqvi described First American New York as the channel for "their entire international business." First American extended credit lines to BCCI branches and affiliates in return for deposits and fees.⁵ In 1987, as BCCI acquired its interest in CenTrust Savings Bank, First American bought the Bank of Escambia in Florida, renamed First American Florida, which led regulators to ask for more information on its dealings with BCCI.⁵

In December 1986 BCCI caused First American's parent, Credit and Commerce American Holdings, to agree to buy the National Bank of Georgia from Ghaith R. Pharaon for 220 million dollars; First American paid 80 million dollars that month for an option, and the purchase closed on August 19, 1987. Price Waterhouse later estimated that BCCI would lose 200 million dollars or more on any sale of First American.⁵

Enforcement

On July 29, 1991, the Federal Reserve fined BCCI 200 million dollars, Pharaon 37 million dollars and Kemal Shoaib 20 million dollars, and worked with directors of First American, among them the former Maryland senator Charles Mathias, to remove Clark Clifford and Altman as chairman and president.⁶ The Federal Reserve's civil case against the two men ended in a consent order of February 1998 under which their CCAH shares were transferred to the court-appointed trustee of First American or the fiduciaries of BCCI.⁷