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First American Bank

First American Bank was a bank based in Washington, D.C., which became secretly owned and controlled by the Bank of Credit and Commerce International.[^1]

Mentions 19 Tags OrganizationBankBCCI

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

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

Sources

  1. Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 8-14. ↩
  2. Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI. New York: Random House, 1993, pp. 192-194. ↩
  3. Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 141. ↩
  4. Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 134. ↩

Connected to

Organization
Bank of Credit and Commerce International
The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was a Pakistani-founded offshore bank that operated across 78 countries before its 1991 collapse exposed a decade-long conspiracy involving money laundering for drug cartels and intelligence agencies, illegal acquisition of U.S. banks, bribery, fraud, and arms trafficking, in what regulators called the largest bank fraud in history.
18 shared pages
viaWilliam Ryback · Robert Altman · Kamal Adham · Arif Durrani · Clark Clifford
Person
Clark Clifford
Clark Clifford (1906-1997) was a Washington attorney who served as Special Counsel to President Truman, co-authored the National Security Act of 1947, served as Secretary of Defense under Lyndon Johnson, and became the central American figure in the BCCI scandal after he and his partner Robert Altman personally vouched to banking regulators that BCCI would not secretly own First American Bank -- a representation that proved false.
9 shared pages
viaWilliam Ryback · Robert Altman · Kamal Adham · Clark Clifford · Amjad Awan

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