Altman acquitted in BCCI fraud case
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This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from August 1993.
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The jury's forewoman wept as she announced the not-guilty verdict in Manhattan Supreme Court, ending the complex, five month trial that unravelled details about the rise and fall of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International.
Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, in a statement, said of the verdict, "Justice has been served. However, our investigation of BCCI continues."
Jurors had been deliberating since Wednesday.
Acquittal began looking more likely last month when New York State Supreme Court Judge John Bradley dismissed half of the eight charges against Altman. But he left intact a key accusation that Altman participated in a scheme to defraud bank regulators by hiding the fact that BCCI was the real buyer of First American Bankshares Inc. At the time of its purchase in 1982, First American, then known as Financial General Bankshares, was the largest bank holding company in Washington and had branches in New York. Altman and his law partner Clark Clifford, a longtime Washington power broker and former defence secretary, were indicted last year by a New York state grand jury on charges of taking bribes in exchange for helping BCCI hide its illegal ownership of U.S. banks.
BCCI's operations were seized throughout the world by regulators who swooped down on them 5 July 1991.
