The_Info_Web/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/First American Bank.md

tags	category	summary	location
Organization Bank BCCI	Private Organization	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]	Washington, DC

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

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 Credit and Commerce American Holdings, 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 Central Intelligence Agency 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

Footnotes

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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. ↩︎