Raymond Banoun

Raymond Banoun is an American lawyer who was for thirteen years an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, heading its Fraud Division, and who from 1988 was one of the defense lawyers of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in Washington. The Senate subcommittee of John Kerry concluded that he "may have acted unethically by willfully misleading it in an attempt to impede the investigation."¹²

Prosecutor

Banoun received a B.A. from the City College of New York in 1965 and a J.D. with honors from George Washington University Law School in 1968. He clerked for U.S. District Judge Harold H. Greene, served for three years as a Special Assistant to the United States Attorney for the Central District of California in Los Angeles, and for thirteen years as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, where he headed the Fraud Division.¹

BCCI

He then became a partner at Arent Fox, Kintner, Plotkin & Kahn in Washington, where he chaired the Business Fraud Group.¹ The Kerry-Brown Senate report listed him with Lawrence Wechsler and Lawrence Barcella as the former federal prosecutors among BCCI's Washington "cadre of professional help," which also included Clark Clifford, former members of Congress John Culver and Michael Barnes, and the former Federal Reserve attorneys Baldwin Tuttle, Jerry Hawke and Michael Bradfield. Robert Altman brought Banoun into the case, according to the report, "to assist in the bank's defense." The report stated: "Aside from Altman, the lawyer who had the most contact with the Subcommittee concerning BCCI was Banoun."²

Altman charged him with overseeing the production of documents in response to the subpoenas the subcommittee issued to BCCI in the summer of 1988, among them "all records relating to General Noriega's accounts in the United States." The subcommittee received information that was "clearly incomplete." Banoun told Newsweek that he had cooperated fully, but that "lawyers don't go around searching for documents for clients"; he told the National Journal that the subcommittee had been "outlawyered," adding, "We don't allow our clients to get pushed around. This is an adversary system, not a roll-over system"; and he complained to the Legal Times that "more and more these days the government [is] wanting information obtained under the attorney-client privilege and attorney work product," calling it "an unfortunate and frightening sign because it erodes very seriously the ability of a lawyer to represent a client." The report noted that "BCCI, of course, waived it [sic] attorney client privilege."²

On May 14, 1989, Altman, Banoun and Wechsler met subcommittee staff and 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 response to the 1988 subpoena.³

A memorandum by Roma Theus, a partner in the Florida firm of Holland & Knight, stated that Altman and Banoun "were doing everything within their power to call in political markers." Banoun called its author a misinformed "fruitcake." Theus told the subcommittee that his information came from the private investigator Phillip Manuel, who had worked for Barcella; Manuel told the subcommittee he had no idea why Theus would write such a thing and that his only information about the investigation came from "journalists with who [sic] he played poker."²

In the fall of 1988 Banoun was also charged with reviewing all of BCCI's accounts in Florida to decide whether criminal referrals should be made. According to the report, documents suggested "that despite evidence of criminal activity produced by the manager of one of BCCI Florida offices (one of BCCI's few honest officers) Banoun made no criminal referrals."²

The Florida License and the Senate

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, "BCCI's lawyers, principally former federal prosecutors Lawrence Wechsler, Lawrence Barcella, and Raymond Banoun, dissatisfied with this result, decided to talk to others in the Justice Department to bring about a different result." On February 13, 1990, Charles Saphos, head of the narcotics section of the Criminal Division, wrote to the Florida comptroller, Gerald Lewis, asking that BCCI be permitted to keep operating, and sent copies to the Federal Reserve "and to BCCI lawyers Banoun and Wechsler." When Lewis invited him to Tallahassee to explain, Saphos wrote back that the Department of Justice took no position on the license.⁴

According to the report, documents showed that Wechsler "and Banoun lobbied the US Senate on behalf of BCCI," and John Culver, a former senator and another Arent Fox partner, lobbied the subcommittee "with Banoun, Weschler and Altman, assuring Subccommittee staff that the bank was fully cooperating, and that, save events in Florida, a sound and honorable institution." In the spring of 1990 Banoun called in his Arent Fox colleague Michael Barnes, a former congressman from Maryland, over a pending article on First American Bank by the journalist Larry Gurwin for Regardie's magazine; Barnes called the publisher, William A. Regardie, to complain, and the magazine published the article.²

Later Career

At the time of the Senate report in December 1992 Banoun headed the white collar criminal defense group in the Washington office of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, which the report rendered as "Caldawater, Wickersham and Taft."² He was a partner at Cadwalader for 25 years, founded its White Collar Group, and was managing partner of its Washington office for ten years, before establishing Banoun Law PLLC. He has chaired the American Bar Association Criminal Justice Section's White Collar Crime Committee and the Business Crimes Committee of the International Bar Association's Section of Business Law, founded the ABA's annual National Institute on White Collar Crime, and co-authored the treatise Money Laundering, Terrorism and Financial Institutions. His practice covers the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, money laundering and asset forfeiture, and foreign bank secrecy in jurisdictions including Switzerland, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas and Panama. He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.¹