By Kathleen Day and Terence O'Hara
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 17, 2004; Page E01
Federal regulators and prosecutors are listening to tape recordings of more than 150 Riggs Bank board meetings as they investigate what role top executives, including former chairman Joe L. Allbritton, played in more than a decade of violations of anti-money-laundering laws at the company, according to five sources familiar with the tapes.
Despite earlier requests from regulators and Senate investigators for documents related to the violations, the bank did not discover the more than 125 tapes until recently, the sources said. The tapes are of board meetings at the bank and its holding company beginning at least as far back as 1989 and ending some time last year, according to the sources, who spoke on condition that their names not be used because of ongoing civil and criminal investigations.
On the tapes, Allbritton, who left Riggs's holding company board in May but remains its largest shareholder, makes what one source said were "derisive" remarks about federal bank regulators who were pushing the bank to correct years-long violations of money-laundering laws. Neither transcripts nor copies of the tapes were made available.
Recording and archiving conversations of board meetings is unusual, corporate legal experts say, because of the potential such recordings could be used against the company or its directors in a legal proceeding. Written minutes, often sanitized of colorful statements or even give-and-take among directors, are usually the only records kept of what board members say to one another.
more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27359-2004Sep16.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
