Lawrence Wechsler

Lawrence H. Wechsler is a Washington, D.C. criminal defense lawyer and a former prosecutor in the United States Attorney's office for the District of Columbia. In 1992 he practiced with the Washington firm of Janis, Schuelke and Wechsler. He represented Albert Hakim in the Iran-Contra Affair, and after the indictment of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in Tampa in October 1988 he was brought in by his close friend Robert Altman to put together the bank's defense team.¹

BCCI Defense

Wechsler recruited Lawrence Barcella, with whom he had worked at the Department of Justice, to coordinate the defense, together with, in the words of the Senate report, a "bevy of other top lawyers." The Senate subcommittee chaired by John Kerry listed him with Raymond Banoun and Barcella as the former federal prosecutors among BCCI's Washington "cadre of professional help," which also included Clark Clifford, the former legislators John Culver and Michael Barnes, and the former Federal Reserve attorneys Baldwin Tuttle and Jerry Hawke.¹²

At a meeting with Senate staff that the report dates May 14, 1989, Wechsler, Altman and Banoun produced 775 pages of new documents concerning General Manuel Noriega. The lawyers stated that they had relied on the statements of the BCCI officer Amjad Awan and had conducted no independent searches for documents in 1988 in response to the subcommittee's subpoena.³

Plea Agreement

In mid-December 1989 Wechsler and Barcella represented BCCI in a series of meetings with the United States Attorney's office in Tampa and with the Customs Service, the Internal Revenue Service and the Drug Enforcement Administration. They offered a guilty plea by the bank to money laundering and its cooperation against other launderers in return for a commitment that this would end BCCI's criminal exposure for all offenses then known to the government. The agreement was reached in January 1990, with a forfeiture of 14 million dollars.⁴

The Florida License

After the United States Attorney in Tampa, Robert Genzman, told Florida regulators on January 31, 1990, that his office took no position on BCCI's state license, the bank's lawyers, "principally former federal prosecutors Lawrence Wechsler, Lawrence Barcella, and Raymond Banoun," approached others in the Justice Department. On February 13, 1990, Charles Saphos, head of the narcotics section of the Criminal Division, wrote to Florida's comptroller, Gerald Lewis, requesting "that BCCI be permitted to operate in your jurisdiction." Saphos sent copies of his letters "to the Federal Reserve, and to BCCI lawyers Banoun and Wechsler." He withdrew the request three days later. The subcommittee concluded that "Saphos was personally lobbied by people he knew who had formerly been with the Justice Department and now represented BCCI on the outside, and agreed to do them a favor."⁴

The Senate

Wechsler declined to meet the subcommittee's staff. The report stated that "documents show that he and Banoun lobbied the US Senate on behalf of BCCI."¹

Gurwin

In 1989 and 1990 Barcella, Altman and the lawyer John Vardaman of Williams & Connolly warned the freelance journalist Larry Gurwin, who was writing about BCCI and First American for Regardie's magazine, that it would be improper to link the two institutions. BCCI's British solicitors separately threatened to sue Gurwin over an article in The Economist, basing their charges on information from the Washington lawyers who had spoken to him. According to the Senate report, "At this point Gurwin had only spoken to Wechsler and Barcella."¹